Our first sports injury...

J takes karate and has since she was 5. She also plays basketball with a passion and I believe she was 3 when that started. She is one of those kids that wants to climb on things and turn everything into a playground, so you knew sooner or later it had to happen. S got a sports injury. Yes, that’s right, S got injured.


Now, like most kids, mine get out their magnifying glasses and if they detect a tiny spot of blood they are whining and need a bandaid-if I am around…So no one was more surprised than me a few weeks ago after gymnastics. Miss Beverly had a few minutes waiting for her private lesson to come in and called S over to work on her cartwheel. “What happened to your toe?” she asked. There it was - S had a bloody big toe…must have slid under something as she was practicing. We put a bandaid on it and went forward.


I left the bandaid on the next day and told them at PreK that S had a legitimate injury and should she complain about her toe they might want to check it out.


As is likely with toe bandaids, it fell off when socks were coming off and S announced, “Look I can pick this (the nail) right up and look under it!” EWWWWWWWWWW….I couldn’t even bear to watch that toe fungus commercial where the animated creature pulled up a toenail. I can’t get excited about the live show. (That said, I could take care of the cat when he ripped his whole claw out in an accident and the shiny white bone was showing – it is just the nails…)


As weeks have gone by it is obvious there has been a severe compromise to the toenail. I can see where the new nail is coming in and where the old nail ends and will come off…However about 10 % of the old nail remains attached…and not the bottom 10% where I could carefully trim away as it grew – it’s the 10% closest to the next toe. So, like a wiggly tooth this nail is hanging there waiting to catch on something and cause a blood curdling scream (the only kind S emits)…I am hoping it is not at her first competition next week.


Note: I couldn’t subject anyone to a real photo and don’t even google toe injury images! Here are toes of happier days…