Chom was riding a bicycle with my daughter Sara sitting on a rack on the back. A piece of a sticky waffle she was eating had gotten stuck on her arm and she leaned to try to eat it off her arm. In the process, her foot got stuck in the spinning spokes in the back wheel, and the spokes cut deep into her foot's flesh, peeling away a slab of tissue about 5 cm across.
I arrived on the scene a couple minutes after the accident to see my daughter's little pink shoe, covered with blood, on the road. There was blood on the road. Chom's bike was discarded on the side of the road. It made me very scared for Sara. Local villagers told me that Chom and Sara had just been taken on the back of a motorcycle to the nearby village clinic.
My son Ty and I ditched our bike and hopped on the back of another motorcycle to the clinic. By the time we got there a nurse had wrapped up Sara's foot in bandages and an ambulance was called.
Soon we were on the way to the little hospital at Mae Dtaeng. Xrays to see if bones were broken. Fortunately no broken bones, and fortunately the tendon was not severed.
Then they laid Sara on a cot and injected anesthetic, and thoroughly cleaned the wound. Soon the doctor was sewing her up. An hour later we rode the ambulance back home. They did a good job, and the wound looks clean and like it will heal nicely. A nice relief from the American medical system, everything (including antibiotics and pain killers) cost less than $25.
Chom and I feel bad that we weren't more risk-averse... that we should have foreseen that her foot might have gotten caught.
