There will be blood

I have long since accepted that "nurse" is part of the job description of "mommy," especially being the mommy of active and accident-prone little boys (yes, they inherited accident-prone from me). On our way to the grocery store this morning, I heard my three year old say, "Mommy, I see blood!" I looked back to see a glorious bloody nose in process. Fortunately, I had a roll of paper towels in my van and quickly threw one back at him to absorb the flow. By the time we arrived at the store, the bleeding stopped and I got him in the bathroom (thank goodness it was at the front of the store) to clean up the gore before I got snarky comments from other shoppers about child abuse. At a different point this morning, my nine-year old was getting ready to take out the kitchen trash and managed to drop the trash can on his big toe. It started to bleed a little under the nail, but he insisted it wasn't too terribly bad and carried on through the day. Tonight, after our doctor's walk-in clinic hours were over and the Instacare was closed, he was crying like a little girl about how bad it hurt. I pulled out my trusty home medical care and read up on how to burn a hole through the nail to release the blood. I wasn't keen on the idea, but it killed me to hear him in so much pain so I decided to put on my big girl panties and deal with it. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts, a call to a woman at my church who is a nurse, and a quick trip to the store down the street for hydrogen peroxide, we managed to release enough of the blood to make him comfortable and (hopefully) clean it out enough to prevent infection. Through all this, I remembered why I changed my major from nursing to education after one semester of college. I'm not a big fan of blood.