Sonburn

Last week we were pontificating on the old superstition* that trouble comes in threes, and wondering what our number three would be after the illness and the burglary last week. Well, we found out...and how.

The first I knew about it was a panicky phone call at work from M telling me that B2 had had an accident at daycare, he was burnt and an ambulance was on the way to pick him up. It wasn't clear where I should go or how I could help, so I usefully flapped around a bit in the office. Eventually we determined that I should head over to meet B1 and M at Westmead Children's Hospital.

What emerged was that he had pulled a water bottle heater onto himself and scolded himself on the chest and the top of his right arm. He received good first aid (cold running water), so the initial prognosis is that the burns are not too severe, and are on about 5% of his surface.

He had to stay in overnight doped up on morphine, and the next morning he had a dressing applied and a Scooby Doo mummy style layer of bandages put on. He has to keep it on for a week at the end of which they will have another look and determine whether he needs surgery. We are hopeful it won't come to that.

He also has to wear a very clumsy looking arm splint to keep his skin from healing in the wrong way, which I think he is finding very frustrating, especially as he has only just learned to crawl. Judging by his first night at home, though, I think his continuing cough is causing just as much distress.

Incidentally, the anaesthetist was called Andrew Weatherall, but it isn't the DJ bloke as far as I can tell. Oddly, if DJ Weatherall didn't exist then neither would B2. No Weatherall, no Screamadelica, no meeting M at a Primal Scream gig, no Bs.

(300th post!)

*Superstition may not contain any truth value