You'll die if you don't breath

Something really wierd happened on Friday night, something that I had never realised in the last 17 years and eight months.

My eldest daughter is terrified of the sight of blood.

Was sitting in the kitchen late on Friday night when I heard the front door go and in walked Amanda, still in her black restaurant uniform, which was a little unusual as she normally works until 1am on a Friday night.

Asked her if they had closed early and in reply she just held up a shaky finger around which was wrapped one of those blue sticking plasters that they use in the food trade.

She couldn't talk, just stood there shaking like a leaf, gasping for breath, in the middle of a panic attack.

I sat her down and got a glas of water and in between lots of sipping and controlled breathing got the story out in little chunks, she'd been forcing some kitchen roll into a dispenser when her hand had slipped and sliced a finger against the serrated tear-off strip inside the dispenser.

She and one of the other waitresses had tried for over half an hour to stop it bleeding and one of the chefs (who are used to slicing their fingers open) had bandaged it up and declared it "deep but not needing stiching" but because it wouldn't stop bleeding she wouldn't be pacified and had eventually been brought home, still in a state of panic bordering on hysteria.

It wasn't bleeding anymore and I finally got her calmed down enough to tell her to go to bed and sleep it off, but she insisted that it was still bleeding and that she wanted it dressing again as the chefs dressing was now soaked in blood.

Took off the dressing with a little difficulty to find an innocuous slash along the top of one finger and down the side of the nail, no doubt it hurt like buggery but it had all but stopped bleeding and the flap of skin was in place and should heal. I cleaned it up and rebandaged it and eventually got her to go to bed.

The next morning she was still panicky about it, after all these years I never realised that she was quite so bad with wounds, redressed it again and it really is just a bad cut, nothing more, it really needs to be exposed to the air to heal now and two days later we've managed to persuade her to take of the dressing and look at it.

Very strange behaviour, she gets it from her mother of course, I'm far to tough to be fightened by things like that :)