I was working at First Place in the lifeguard tower.  A young mother came running up with a small child in her arms.  They had a paper towel wrapped around his foot that was soaked with blood. She was hysterically screaming, “Help Me! Help Me! My child is bleeding.” 

      So I jumped down out of the tower with my first aid box and met her and told her to sit down with the child and hold her child and comfort him while I took a look at the injury. 

      I asked her what had happened and she said he had been playing on the beach and that he had stepped on something sharp on the sand.  I cautiously removed the bloody paper towel to look at the injury and I found two rather large lacerations to the bottom of his foot, both of them arch shaped that would be indicative of him stepping on the broken bottom of a bottle.  She was right!  He was bleeding rather profusely. 

      I opened my first aid box to reach for what we called a trauma bandage, which, at the time, happened to be a large feminine StayFree maxi pad.  As I pulled it out of a clearly marked box that said StayFree maxi pad on it, the mother saw me open the box and pull this feminine napkin out. 

      She freaked out!  She said, “You’re not going to put that on my son’s foot are you?” 

      And I said, “Well, yes.” 

      She exclaimed, “You can’t put that on my son’s foot!”

      To which I asked, “Well why not?”

      She said, “Well you just can’t!”

      I explained, “Ma’am, we use these as bandages.”

      “Well, that’s not what they’re supposed to be used for!” she responded, and we kind of got into an argument briefly about the use of this pad.

      I said, “Ma’am, you have to understand that these are very absorbent.”

      “Yes, I know they are.” she responded.

      So I said, “Well then, there shouldn’t be any objection because it’s going to be helping to stop the bleeding on your son’s foot and we are going to need to get him to the hospital so we can see if he’s going to need some stitches, which it looks like he will.”