a mommy-freak-out

I probably just had the most terrifying moment of my life today.

Let me premise this by giving some background information. The kids like to play doctor. We have a bench downstairs . . . one kid lays on it and the other puts the bunny ears on their head upside down and pretends it's a stethoscope. (this picture is of our friend Hailey).
On Saturday we had a Primary activity where I used this bungee cord for 3-legged races. I brought it home and Ellie was mesmerized that she could either pretend it could be a jump rope or a blue princess crown on her head -- which she loved.

Well this morning Ellie had some friends over and I knew they were playing doctor. All of a sudden I hear Ellie's peal of frightfully painful crying. I run around the corner and see her on the bench with the hook of the bungee cord hooked into her eye. Kids will do some crazy things to each other without constant supervision, I guess.

(this picture is after we came home)

But I FREAKED OUT! I pulled it out and grabbed her up and held her tight. I looked down and saw blood leaking out of her eye socket and pooling all around her eye. Then I really lost my mind. I ran upstairs got a wet towel and made her keep her eye closed. I called my mom - asked her what to do. She has me call Dr. Yost's office. All I had to say there way "bungee cord" and "eye" and they told me to speed there as fast as I could. My mom came over to finish watching the other kids and I drove like a madman as Ellie continued to cry. The bleeding had stopped but it'd been about 20 minutes. I ran in there and a nurse was waiting for me and the doctor was looking at her within 5 minutes. Apparently I had been able to calm Ellie down - which he said was a good sign. If she had scratched her cornea she would have been inconsolable -- and she likely would have lost some of her vision. So that put me at ease but he still had to put dye in her eye and use a black light to check for scratches. Sure enough there was a jagged one - and he gave her antibiotics for it to heal up over the next few days without infection. He said the blood was from a tear on the inside of her eyelid. So yeah. She should be fine but I have to keep a superclose eye on it.
She did get a sticker -- I shiny, sparkly, Elmo one. Which did help. After she was declared A-ok I decided to still go into work for a few hours -- just to try to keep my mind off of it and help me calm down. I think for the rest of the day both of us were recovering from shock. I'm still kind of shaking. But every once in a while, randomly, that picture of what it looked like to see your kid lying there with a big plastic hook in her eye socket flashes back in my head and I tense up and . . . I think I'm going to have mommy nightmares about this one for a while.

Gratefully my friend April (her sweetie was the one that was the "doctor") took it all in stride with me through my first scary moment - Claire came back over to say sorry -- and needless to say I don't think the kids will ever want to play doctor again!!! And I'm going to have quite the time packing up every item in my toyroom that looks even remotely dangerous.