Kids and Cold Weather

My daughter came home yesterday after having fun with "winter olympics" at her school.  I came to ask her to rip a bandaid off my arm (yes I am a bit of a baby) when I noticed how red her hands were.  She had tried to hide them from me.  I asked if she wore her mitts. She had that look on her face teenagers get when they know they can't lie.  No, she didn't wear any the entire time she was outside in -17 celsius weather, playing in the snow.  When I saw the "worm-like" growth on her pinky, I got quite worried.

Her pinky is quite large compared to normal.

I called the medical clinic but they were full, so we went to the hospital. By the time we got there, she noticed more tiny blisters on her pinky.  Sure enough, she had frostbite.  Polysporin, bandaids and being careful to avoid infection were ordered.

You can't really see how red her hand actually is in this picture but you can see the line on her hand above her wrist where her hand was exposed.

After a restless sleep, she got up this morning.  Her pinky blister has grown almost the length of her pinky.

Her pinky the next day.

My point of this post is not to tell you what to do when you get frostbite. It is to show what it can look like and tell you it is painful and to encourage you to show the pictures to your kids who refuse to wear mitts on a cold day. This is what it can look like. And this is mild.

I don't know what it will look like in a few days. I am sure it will get worse before it gets better. I just hope it doesn't affect her too much.  She is right handed and loves to draw. She was thinking of being a tattoo artist when she gets older.  All of these could be affected because of this.  Today she finally realized how important simple things are, like taking the extra two minutes to run to her
locker to get her mitts.

Her knuckle was cut quite deep as well.