Burned

I have pictures but I'm not ready to be reminded yet.  Just a few days after her birthday Rylee burned her hand on a pellet stove.  She had 2nd degree burns all over her fingers and palm.  There were a few places where she had 3rd degree burns.  She's still healing.  For a little while there we were worried her hand was going to heal crippled.  She would not use it if we had bribbed her with a million tootsie roll pops, or chocolate bars, or popsicles...  We held lots of different things out to her to encourage her to use her fingers.  Nothing worked.   It was very, very sad. 

Needless to say, it was a happy day when she finally did start wiggling her hand again and a very happy day when the docs said I didn't have to pry open her tender fingers to scrub her burn with warm water and a washcloth two times a day.  Oh yes, we're glad that is mostly just a memory now.  And as unpleasant as this little experience was,  do I ever feel like we got off easy.  I'm not made of what you've got to be made of to handle what we only got glimpses of on our visits to the burn clinic.  It hurts my heart to think about it. 

Ryan has helped me through lots of difficult times by showing me how to laugh when there is nothing left to do with an ugly situation.  I was just getting better at it too, when this experience kind of hit me dead in my tracks.  We haven't been able to laugh at this one.