She was running to meet me at the car after the bell had rung, trying to beat her little sister into the front seat, when she lost her footing on some loose stones. 

The hefty weight of a school bag filled with year 6 contents – which include a netbook computer, water drink bottle, lunchbox with fruit still intact, homework, icy pole money, about half a dozen trinkets and some school bag decorations – pulled her down hard. 

The middle one managed to make contact with a combination of gravel and concrete. 

She used both knees, one hand and an elbow to facilitate skidding to a halt. This technique achieved some pretty impressive injuries. As I hadn’t seen this horror unfold, and my 12-year-old arrived at the boot of the car looking fairly normal ready to throw her bag in, I was surprised by her distressed response to my cheery greeting. 

Beside me in the front seat, she sat down skun, then started to bleed … a lot. 

I was totally unprepared for my baby looking like she’d used her skin to lose a fight with a cheese grater and veggie peeler all at once. I didn’t have any wet wipes, but thank goodness I had tissues.

As the shock started to wear off and the bleeding began in earnest, Yasinta started to feel the pain. 

It wasn’t pretty. She kept it together extremely well in the car, but at home she lashed out, dealing with the situation with a bit of anger. 

Yasinta wouldn’t let me help clean the wound which was housing quite a few components of the offending pathway.   

The 30-minute wait for the painkilling medication to kick in was both long and lamenting.   

Remembering the first aid kit, I blew the dust off and searched for some bandages that would cover strangely positioned wounds without sticking, therefore necessitating the ripping off of stuck things to very sore lacerations.     

Hours later, the biggest worries on Yasinta’s mind were how to negotiate walking up the stairs to bed with one leg that didn’t want to bend, how to keep the bed sheets off all the sore bits and how she was going to get through her physical education class the next day. 

All the while, 10-year-old Tiani claimed that her one million mozzie bites were so much worse. 

Yolande Grosser