I am going to start this one out by saying DO NOT LOOK if you are squeamish at the sight of blood and gore… You have been warned…
This evening started out like many others this summer in The Hood… I had left the campground on my rounds through our other campground we were responsible for just 2 miles up the road. It was a busy night, so I had a bunch of campers to check in and the bathrooms were a wreck so I had some last minute cleaning and TP supplying to take care of. The sun was going down, so it was starting to get dark when some familiar headlights came flying through the campground. Seeing Chas pull up in our car so fast without the girls in the car made my heart sink since I knew something had to be wrong. She told me Lydia had a really bad splinter in her toe and I had to come home to help her.
Since I am the family medical provider when it comes to cuts, gashes, splinters, burns, and any other trauma for that matter, I expected a routine splinter removal. When I got back to the bus I was not prepared for what I saw in her poor little bloody toe. I had been telling them all summer that running around barefooted and/or wearing flip-flops were a recipe for disaster, but nobody seemed to listen to my words of wisdom. Lydia was running around behind our canopy to hide because she thought I was coming back home and they wanted to surprise me. Wearing flip-flops, she kicked the end of a 2″ diameter stick and it lodged a large chunk of itself under her toenail. I have had small splinters under a nail, and they do not feel good at all. I could not imagine what this one felt like in the least. Knowing the ER was an hour drive away, and it was too late for the Urgent Care to be open, I gave her the option of me removing it.
After some debating of options, she decided to let me remove it. I had to use the small scissors out of my tackle box to cut away the nail since I knew it would fall into a million pieces if I tried to pull it out. It was so thick, it actually ripped the nail up from the nail bed, the pressure had to be intense for sure. After cutting the nail away on both sides of the splinter, the pressure was reduced enough to get the largest chunk out. Then I cut the rest of the nail away and flushed it out with some of our peroxide based contact solution (we use that stuff for everything). She said it felt so much better after I had it removed the pressure was causing the majority of the pain. We wrapped it up and took care of it, and she healed faster than I expected (leave it to kids). Now for the photos, brace yourself… I have come to accept the fact that bare-footed kids toes are always dirty, you should accept that too 🙂
Lydia was a real trooper during the surgery, with no anesthetic to be had. She was very thankful when it was over, and so was I. I am still not sure who had the most traumatic experience, me or her… That night she promised to always wear shoes whenever I told her it was a good idea and that she would get rid of her flip-flops… That didn’t last as long as I had hoped, the flops are still in the every day shoe pile…
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