Broken Wing

Our littlest one fell out of bed the other night with a rather louder thump than usual, she was quite for a few seconds and then stated that she had "hurt herself" - the poor poppet, normally very stoic in the face of injury, was pale and shaken. We checked her over to ensure there was no major or obvious problems/deformities etc. and she fell asleep in our bed after being given some paracetamol (15mg per kg for children) The next day she was naturally guarding and splinting it against her body, so we suspected a fractured clavicle - said suspicion was proven on X-Ray the next day. There is not much that can be done for non-displaced fractures of the collarbone except sling them for comfort and analgesia. I hate to see any of my children hurt and I do empathise with parents when they come in with their sick and/or injured kids. It's a horrible feeling. The good thing is, children are very resilient and heal quickly.
Not so resilient was the young woman in our department a few mornings ago who made a bad decision fuelled by alcohol and heightened emotions (actually, you can pretty well guarantee that any decision fuelled by these two factors will be a bad one) She decided to jump out of a moving vehicle going between 40 to 60 kilometers an hour because she was having an argument with her boyfriend. Ouch. In actual fact she was extremely lucky. If a tree had been in the projected vector of her travel as she disembarked at speed, she may well have been dead, instead of suffering from extreme gravel rash to a good percentage of her body. To add insult to her injuries, she was also badly hung over and was vomiting copiously most of the morning Amazingly she sustained no other injuries. She really was a very nice girl and felt very foolish about what she had done. It's a shame what alcohol can do to you...hopefully she will never try THAT again...
Big thanks to Gary who pointed me in the direction of some very good pointers for optimizing firefox at this link on his site TFS reluctant. He also brought Comet C2004 Q2 (Machholz) to my attention, which is one this intermittent amateur astronomer will be seeking out over the next few nights if the skies stay clear! Thanks Gary!