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Christina M. Currie

Christina M. Currie's Touch of Spice column appears Fridays in the Craig Daily Press. E-mail her at director@craig-chamber.com

"This will hurt me more than it will hurt you."

Yeah. Anyone who's ever been on the receiving side of any form of punishment knows there's no way that statement can be true.

Well, there was that one time when mom broke the wooden spoon she was wielding and the pieces flew back at her.

Of course, that just increased her ire.

But the bottom line is that when you're on the physical side of a mental versus physical battle, you're pretty sure that it's going to hurt you a lot more than it's going to hurt them.

Now that I'm a parent, I understand the gist of that statement, but in all reality, I've never found it to be totally true.

Until now.

On the eve of her 9th birthday, Katie was in the emergency room getting a mosquito bite turned blister cultured.

The doctor was pretty sure it was a staph infection.

The lab results the next day confirmed he was right, but they one-upped him.

She had MSRA - Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Basically, staph on steroids.

We were instructed to follow up with a doctor in two days. We didn't need to be told. Katie's blister had turned into a mega zit. A red, pulsing, sensitive boil, the size of a belly button when it turns from an innie to an outtie.

There was no question that it had gotten worse. And better out than in, it needed to be cut open and drained.

I will not presume to say that pinning her to the table while she writhed and cried hurt me more than it hurt her, but her tears, her pleas for them to stop, her begging to be given just a little break cut me to the bone.

I've never experienced anything so painful in my life, and it was only later that I learned that my tears, my pleas and my begging nearly overshadowed hers.

I'm a fairly collected person and generally handle crisis without getting overly emotional. I never even dreamed I'd be the woman in the emergency room that loses control and you want to escort out of the room.

And I was that woman.

Bless those who didn't have me escorted out.

As a parent you want, to the very marrow of your bones, to take every ounce of pain your children suffer and make it your own. There isn't anything I wouldn't have given to be the one on that table instead of Katie.

And the hardest thing about being a parent is knowing you can't.

And that hurts.

Me more than it ever will her.