When Carseats Attack

A couple years ago I wrote a post about the time I sliced my nose open while carrying a carseat box through the house. Many readers also shared stories of times their carseats caused them injuries. It seems to happen a lot. Since then I’ve gotten a few more scrapes and scratches, but never in my life have I had to seek actual medical attention due to a carseat-related injury…until now.

The day before the ABC Kids Expo began in Las Vegas, I was among a group of people helping carry some carseats from a building to someone’s car. (I’m going to let that person remain nameless because this truly wasn’t her fault at all, as she hadn’t even asked for help carrying the seats to her amazing, self-driving electric car. But I digress.)

In retrospect, I could have stayed on the concrete walkway. I should have stayed on the concrete walkway. But seats are heavy and the car was much closer if we cut across the landscaping, which in this case was a bunch of rocks because that’s how environmentally conscious entities landscape in Las Vegas.

At this point I should mention that I was wearing flip-flops and that, because of the carseat, I couldn’t really see where I was walking.

I had just joked that we should watch out for rattlesnakes when my left foot plunged into a hole. I felt jagged rocks tear into my skin on the way down and then again on the way back up.

A few things I should be thankful for:

1. There were no rattlesnakes.
2. I didn’t twist or break anything—structurally my foot and ankle were fine.
3. I didn’t fall over. I did have to run several steps to avoid it, but I stayed upright.
4. I didn’t drop the carseat.

When I got back into the building I tried ignoring the pain emanating from my foot. (“It’s only a flesh wound!” I told myself.) In fact for a few minutes I didn’t even look at it, figuring it probably wasn’t a big deal and sort of hoping that ignoring it would make the problem go away.

When I did finally look down, I saw minor scratches—a lot of them—but also several deep, bleeding gouges. I bummed a baby wipe and a couple Band-Aids off a well prepared CarseatBlogger and figured that was that.

That was not that.

By the following evening, my foot hurt so much that the lightest touch made me wince. I struggled to put my left shoe on. I ended the night limping, but I wasn’t going to let that slow me down.

The next morning, I noticed my foot was extremely red. I thought it might have been a reaction to the Band-Aids (my skin tends to be sensitive with some types) or maybe from the adhesive irritating the many smaller scratches surrounding the larger gouges. I FaceTimed with my husband, a fireman, to get his take.

The first thing he asked was, “Why is it so swollen?” Until that point I hadn’t even noticed that the outer part of my left foot had grown abnormally large, which probably explained why I couldn’t get my shoe on the night before. That led to a call to my insurance company to find the closest Urgent Care I could go to, which turned out to be less than a mile away. A quick Uber ride later, I was there.

My foot had gotten infected, and the doctor recommended a shot of antibiotics followed by a 10-day course of oral antibiotics. My first question was whether I could still drink. (After all, when in Vegas…) I agreed to everything, of course, and assumed the shot would be given near the wound. Nope. It wasn’t.

The doctor told me to keep off my foot and elevate it as much as possible, which was much harder advice to follow than his “just drink a little” warning. My whole reason for being in Las Vegas was this huge trade show in a huge convention center. I did manage to prop my foot up a few times, but overall I did not do a good job following the doctor’s orders.

The good news is that just a day later, the swelling had gone down considerably and my foot only hurt if I touched it hard—no more cringing in pain because a bed sheet lightly brushed against it.

As I write this a week later, I’m still on antibiotics and I still have a gross-but-kind-of-cool-looking injury. But I also have a good story to tell, and I’ve learned my lesson about wearing flip-flops and blindly walking on rocks while carrying a carseat, just in case I ever find myself in that position again.