Does mental anguish count?
My daughter at roughly the age of 8, was balancing on top of the low stone wall next to a chain link fence. Her carer told her, 'get down, you might fall' which to an 8 year old's ears was a primal challenge.
She did get down though after tripping and falling.
To catch herself, she clamped her left arm down on the top of the fence with all her weight. Just one problem: the top of the fence wasn't blunted. It was a collection of razor sharp spikes and tore her upper arm completely open.
When I met her at the doc's office (stupid insurance rules dictated she had to be seen by a doctor before they would pay for a trip to A&E) the carers had wrapped her arm in yards of gauze. The doc unwrapping it had a split second glimpse of the damage, yelped "Whoa!" and wrapped it back up. He offered he "might take a stab at repairing it if we were in backcountry Alaska" but the A&E was prolly a better choice. So we wasted an hour delaying treatment in order to satisfy my corporate masters.

In all its gory glory at hospital, I almost fainted. It looked like a bear had tried to eat her and partially succeeded. The muscles were chopped and hanging open, I could see the glistening surface of her bone, skin was a savaged blue-purple and gobbets of fat were falling to the floor. And the blood! And all the while my brave little girl kept it together with trembling lip.

She broke my heart. For some reason she has a fear and horror of medical things and was begging me to "sew me up at home! I just want to go home!"* She gagged when she saw her arm in the reflection of the doc's aviator style glasses. When she understood she would have to have a LOT of stitches, she cried. I would have gladly ripped my arm open myself to spare her but that's not how it works.
To add insult to injury, the doc tried to palm off her care on a third year med student: "My colleague is a fully trained M3 and will sew up your child's injury". I refused, told him I knew what an M3 was and he'd better get the attending to stitch and a plastics guy to close it cause I wasn't having my daughter's arm be a learning experience.

Amazingly enough, that is what happened. He did his job and I shut up per the unspoken agreement.

She was so frightened while he worked on her, I made her look in my eyes while I told her a story. It took over an hour and I talked the entire time, telling C.S. Lewis' "The Silver Chair" from memory. The staff was enthralled and hung on my every word. The plastic surgeon finished before I reached the end and when I stopped talking, the junior nurse exclaimed "Oh, tell us what happened!" They thought I had been making the story up on the fly, right out of my own head.

She had over 120 stitches (I lost count)inside the arm and 65 minute, teeny tiny plastic surgery stitches to close the skin. I saw every one put in. The big jagged scar must be over a foot long and has healed to an almost invisible silver.
I have never suffered such anguish as that day. I don't know how people lose children and still go on living. Seeing her in pain, mutilated, whimpering yet trying to be a brave girl for Mommy and Daddy made me feel like I'd been kicked in the chest.


*Two years before, she wanted me to set her broken arm so get out of going to hospital.
Four years before, she ripped open the armpit down to the capsule on the same arm. Because she didn't want to miss swimming, she merely balled up her T shirt and stuffed it in the wound. We found it almost too late to repair without undergoing general anesthesia. My woo-woo friend says she must have been a Roman centurion in a previous life.
(TDub Nunc id vides, nunc ne vides on, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 6:26, 6 replies)

Wow!
Your wee girl sounds cool as fuck. Have a *click*
(god_is_a_ghoti Carpe Deum., Fri 30 Jul 2010, 8:24, closed)

actual tears welled up reading this
your daughter would have surely been a gladiator!
(Monkeystrumpet monkey. Monkey, MONKEY!!!, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 8:28, closed)

Blimey, that's a brave girl.

( Colonel Boris "...a desperate Buzzfeed imitation...", Fri 30 Jul 2010, 10:11, closed)

Jesus, that's horrific
Your daughter is ace.
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 12:35, closed)

What a trooper!
I hope you bought her an ice cream about 3 times the size of her head.
(flimflam_machine, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 13:15, closed)

Almost...
I think I favor her in the matter of little treats, still. She's 19 now.
(TDub Nunc id vides, nunc ne vides on, Sun 1 Aug 2010, 6:41, closed)