A Jen Too Many

One hour waiting to see the doctor.

Five minutes (maybe less) spent talking with the doctor.

And yet, I left the doctor's office completely happy because she confirmed that Oldest Girl Child wasn't going to die within the next 24 hours, or lose her foot, or any part of her foot. She wasn't bitten by a venomous snake, she wasn't bitten by a venomous spider, there was no poison coursing through her sturdy little system, and All Was Going To Be Okay.

(Oh, hush. I'm a mother. I'm entitled to panic when my child is mysteriously injured - as long as I don't let the child in question know what kind of wild disasters I'm imagining.)

It all started a little before noon yesterday, when OGC ran home from the friend's house where she was playing, hysterically sobbing. She'd stepped on something. Her toe hurt. The world was coming to an end.*

I looked at her toe and couldn't see anything, so I reassured her that it would feel better soon and gave her a placebic bandage. (An adhesive bandage can fix anything, especially if there is a Disney princess on it. Or Barbie. Dora is also good and so are rainbows and butterflies. Just not as good as princesses.)

She ran off back to her friends, but not before complaining that her toe was starting to feel strange. I dismissed her comments as hyperbole. Bad idea. For once, it wasn't exaggeration.

She was back a few minutes later, even more upset and hysterical. Her foot was swelling up, the swelling spreading noticeably from the area around her toe. We tried to comfort her, we tried to get more details about what had happened, and about five minutes after she got home her father suggested Benadryl.

The swelling had spread another half inch in that five minutes, but after taking the Benadryl, slowed dramatically. I called the pediatrician and got an appointment for 3:00, then waited, suppressing my alarm and impatience in the interests of keeping my little daughter from freaking out even more. Her alarm faded rather rapidly, actually, and before long she was expressing her acute disappointment at having such a cruel and heartless mother, who wouldn't let her go back to play with her friends while her foot was swollen.

When we finally got in to see the doctor (whose waiting room was the most packed I've ever seen - she really did not need another patient that day!) she confirmed that there was no broken skin. It wasn't a spider bite (I wasn't seriously concerned about a snake bite, not between her two toes - c'mon, I have some common sense), although it might be some kind of sting. It was probably an allergic reaction, but she wanted us back the next day to make sure it wasn't some kind of fast growing infection. She reassured me that since it was only a local reaction we weren't likely to have to cope with an anaphylactic reaction the next time she ran into whatever had caused this, gave OGC a mini-lecture about not running around barefoot, told me to give her Benadryl every eight hours, and sent us off much cheered.

Her foot is still swollen today, so we are watching movies (The Swan Princess: Escape From Castle Mountain is currently on its third airing today) until it is time to go back to the doctor's office. Hopefully she'll be back on her feet soon. I can't take much more of that blasted swan.
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*Why, yes, she was wearing shoes when she left the house. No, she wasn't when she came running back. Yes, we have discussed this matter. In fact, she brought it up, sobbing out, "I'm never going to take my shoes off again!"