On Ghastly Gashes

Sammie put a ghastly gash in her leg just below her knee last Sunday evening, Easter Sunday. She has become a minor celebrity because she posted the gruesome photo on Facebook and it hasbasically gone viral, in a limited way. People like her friend's brother's friend think it cool enough to put on their phones and everyone in church today wanted to see it or wanted a copy. It is really, really grotesque. She slid into a sprinkler head while we were playing Pickle with a frisbee. I feel terrible because I had encouraged her to slide. The sprinkler head in question is plastic, and maybe 1/16 of an inch above the surface of the grass. But it acted like a deep razor and sliced her leg open badly for a very long distance. I'm not sure the distance, but several inches.

We took her to the emergency room and the doctor took one look at it and called the orthopedic surgeon at a different hospital and ordered her transferred. It was so beastly that the ambulance guys who came to get her were snapping photos of it, for future trauma training or something, or maybe just because it was so cool. The anasthesiologist, who looked about 55 to 60 years old, said he had never seen anything like it.

I did not get a good look at it until we were in the emergency room when they cut off her pants. I only caught a quick glimpse, but nearly fainted. I felt very lightheaded, had to move out into the hallway and sit down and put my head between my legs. They gave me some Sprite and I started to feel a bit better. Luckily, Charlie was with us, and could help out. I'm a mess with blood and injuries. I would be the world's worst soldier, always passed out by the sickening sights. I sometimes wonder what I would have done if drafted in a major war. Hopefully they would have figured it out and given me a desk job somewhere clerking for someone.

Anyway, Sammie thinks it's awesome, and so, apparently, does the rest of the world. I'm happy for them. It might be worse for me since it's my daughter and I feel responsible for telling her to slide. I'm not sure I'll ever look at the photo.

I'm just grateful that we live in an age where she can receive excellent care from skilled doctors and get pumped full of antibiotics to prevent infection. The surgical nurses said they were picking a lot of grass out of the wound and could put their hands halfway down her shin inside the skin because it had ripped the muscle away from the bone. Crazy.

I'm grateful for God's blessings in the face of such awful injuries. Sammie came home from the hospital Wednesday and spent the next three days fishing with us. We had a lot of fun and she is a wonderful girl!