This is one of my oldest vivid memories…
When I was almost three years old, I was in Connecticut visiting my grandparents. I was with my grandmother at a friend’s house when a little dog came wandering in. It was a Dachshund… a weiner dog. Apparently I decided to feed him a cracker. I remember bending over and handing him something, and I remember him lunging for my face. I also remember seeing something in his mouth, but as an adult looking back I think that isn’t a true memory. The dog tore off part of my mouth, but I don’t think it was enough for there to be some skin hanging out of the dog’s mouth.
I remember sitting on the kitchen counter while my grandmother and her friend tried to clean the blood off of my face, and then I remember sitting in the car, driving to the hospital.
I was holding a big wadded up towel or paper towels to my face. I could see the blood spreading through and that is mostly what I remember of the drive to the hospital.
Once we arrived at the hospital, there was a long delay while they got a plastic surgeon to come in. None of the surgeons on duty were willing to work on a toddler with a dogbitten face. When the surgeon finally arrived, I was terrified. I was laying on a bed and he was standing at the head of it, so I saw him above me, upside down. My grandmother was to the left of the bed and I turned to her and pleaded with her not to let the doctor touch me.
In the end, he got me numbed up. Once the pain was gone I was all curiosity. I wanted to see what he was doing. I knew he was sewing me up, but what he had in his hand looked like scissors, rather than a needle, though I could see the thread coming out of the end. It actually wasn’t until I had my toe sewn up when I was in my 20s that I figured out what I’d seen.
When he was done sewing me up, he left and his nurse gave me a lollipop from a drawer for being such a good girl. I felt horribly guilty because obviously she didn’t know I hadn’t been good at all—I’d been screaming and begging my grandmother to keep the doctor away! I felt guilty about it for days. The recovery was lots and lots of ice cream. I remember that until the numbness wore off, the inside of my mouth felt like a bar of soap to my tongue. It must have been really swollen, too, because it was hard to fit the ice cream spoon into my mouth.
I don’t recall getting the stitches out, or much else related to the bite for several years. The scar on my face, however, shaped the way I was treated by other children until I was in high school. As late as 10th grade I was still being called “Scarface” or other mean names. I was convinced that I was very ugly.
As an adult I don’t really think about the scar much anymore. I don’t see it in the mirror unless I’m trying to put lipstick on, which is tricky because I have to “fake” the line on the right side. Some day I may have a surgeon try to minimize it… I don’t know. The dog was put to sleep, by the way. I always felt guilty about that.
— 03:28:34 AM
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