The Second Degree

Today I arrived home to find Erika playing with a jigsaw puzzle and completely failing to acknowledge the triumphant return of her father. So I did what any sensible parent would do and sat on the puzzle, at which point instead of saying "Welcome home, Daddy" or similar, she instead started getting upset that I was like sitting on her puzzle etc etc blah blah blah. Suddenly, there is a shriek from the kitchen like one of those horror movies.

Now, if you've watched any horror movies at all, you know that the last thing you should do in that situation is walk into the kitchen to see what is going on. But, that's what I did. And there was Yoshie blubbering on about ice and "give me one of those" (one of those whats?, I wonder). It turns out that what has happened is that she was making a pitcher of tea to be put in the refrigerator for cooling. And the bottom fell out of the pitcher spilling, well, boiling water all over the place, and especially her feet.

So! We leapt into action and applied ice to the burns right away. Which turns out to be the wrong thing to do according to the interwebs. Anyway, I took Erika to our local Duane Reade where we (well, I) purchased one of every interesting looking burn medicine, waited in line for approximately 27 hours while ... the ... guy ... behind ... the ... cash ... register ... pressed ... the ... buttons ... one ... by ... one ... to ... serve ... the ... people ... in ... front ... of ... us.

Returning with my hard earned loot, I was met with incredulity that I hadn't asked the pharmacist (asked him what?, I wondered) and sent off to CVS to do it right. So I loaded Erika into the stroller this time, and at CVS I asked the pharmacist and got some MORE burn ointment and some non stick pads and stuff like that.

Finally we became dimly aware that the burns were looking like second degree burns, and the interwebs are sort of wishy-washy about them: get medical attention if they are over a "large" area. But anyway we decided to check out the local ER. But first, we had to deal with the girl who had fallen asleep in the stroller.

So, I rolled her over to a friend who agreed to look over her, and off we went to the ER. After a long rigamarole with the administrivia, we finally got into the ER where the doctor looked at the burn for about 3 seconds, then walked away. A few minutes later, she brought some medicine for Y to take, and went away again. Then a bit later she brought over some "burn cream", applied it liberally to Y's left foot, put some bandages over it, and then went away. After a wait, she appeared again to give Y a tetanus shot. And disappeared again. Finally after yet another wait, she came back and gave us some prescriptions and instructions to get checked at the Cornell burn clinic which evidently has some kind of cool burn scanning machine.

With Y's foot it was hard to walk, so we asked the guy at the door if it was easy to get a taxi. He responded by calling a car service for us. A couple of minutes passed, a car drove up, and the doorman sent us to the car. Which turned out to be the wrong car, as the correct car drove up behind the first car a few seconds later (also the driver in the first car was confused). Finally number two car got us home and finally at 10pm we ordered dinner.