Tearful triage

There's nothing like hearing your child's scream to get your attention. The other day, Faith was playing outside on her Barbie four-wheeler when we heard her cries. She was holding her head as she approached the back door in tears. All she could manage to say was that she fell. We could see there was already a place on her head that seemed to be swelling. With a sequence of questions, we tried to figure out how she hurt herself, while at the same time we were quickly assessing the nature of her injury. It turns out she was playing on a piece of exercise equipment when the handles hit her in the head and knocked her down. A short time under an ice pack in her room and she was back to normal. Then last night, she screamed for us from the bathtub. What in the world could have unleashed such a desperate cry for help? Turns out, she had turned on the faucet to fill the tub, and couldn't shut it off. She was frantic as the water level was rising near the top of the tub. Daddy turned off the water and life returned to normal. It's amazing how fast your heart can race from a state of tranquility to near panic.

- Liz Fabian