Highs and lows of our 5th trip to Florida Marco island day 2 paradise to hospital!

[Lisatink]

I'm not sure where to start about today as we went from this

To this

We got up this morning around 7.30 and went down to our fishing dock.
Lots of bites but the fish kept getting away. Mark caught another Catfish, I caught a Pinfish.

Just as we were putting the rods away a dolphin surfaced from under the deck on which we were standing. It came out of the water before carrying on through the water way.

We were planning on going to Tiger Tail Beach today so we ate breakfast by the pool before driving to the beach.
We parked and paid the $8.00 fee and then headed to the beach.

This place was amazing but if you are not keen on adventure and wildlife this is not the place for you. I tried to get pictures but it wasn't easy on my phone.
When you park at Tiger Tail you have to go on quite an adventure to get to the beach.
You can either walk all the way around the mangroves or you can walk through them.
We chose to walk through!

As we walked through the mangroves we saw lots and lots of birds including Pelicans, Ospreys, many different types of Herron and bright pink spoon bills.
There were lots of fish in the water and the bigger ones were leaping out of the water. I wasnt sure about walking through the mangroves but I am glad we did as we saw so much wildlife.

After about 10 minutes of walking through the water we arrived at this!

We got into the sea, it was our own private beach and the wildlife just kept coming through. Ospreys where diving and catching fish, Pelicans were flying past and many other birds. It was lovely!
The shells on the beach were great, so many colours, shapes and sizes. We collected a bag full, making sure that they weren't live. We also found a Sand Dollar.

We also saw some fenced off areas where turtles have laid their eggs.

After a couple of hours we decided to get a drink. This beach is remote and there are no toilets, bars or shops. We decided to walk around the Mangroves this time so had to go the long way round. This was hard going as it was very hot!
We eventually made our way back to the car. Mark had read about a bar that he wanted to visit on a marina called the Dolphin Tikki Bar. This was lovely and the food looked amazing. We will go back for a meal later in the week
We had one drink before heading back to the villa.
Mark set the rods up for another fish and I went into the pool with Lily.
This is where it all went wrong!😥
We were racing and playing in the pool and really enjoying ourselves when Lily swam to the bottom of the pool, I can't really explain how it happened but she came up from the bottom with her face pouring with blood. Before I go any further I should explain that Lily is the most clumsy accident prone child you will ever meet. Exactly a year ago today we had to visit a hospital in Orlando because Lily fell out of queen sized bed whilst asleep and sliced her ear on the bedside table which resulted in 6 stitches!

This time she had managed to bang her face on the bottom of the pool in the process she grazed her nose, took a chunk out of her lip but also got the inside of her lip stuck in her brace.
I tried my best to free her mouth from the brace but was scared that I was going to damage her more. Her brace was embedded into her mouth!

I wasnt sure whether to take her to the dentist or the hospital, we were googling different places but as it was Sunday they were all closed.
We got in the car and drove to the nearest pharmacy to find out where we could go to that was open..we were directed to Urgent Care which happened to be in the same road as our villa.
We arrived and explained what had happened. The lady took down our English address and confirmed that we had insurance.
We needed our passports so Mark ran back to the villa to get them.
The doctors were lovely and we were quickly seen. The doctor looked at Lily's mouth to see if she could free her lip from her brace.
Lily is a brave little cookie but I could tell she was in a lot of pain. The doctor had a couple of goes and then let Lily have a rest. The doctor started to talk about waiting until tomorrow to go to the dentist. This is where my little hero said "no just do it" she shut her eyes, held my hand, I also closed my eyes!
The doctor used tweezers to dig the brace out of her mouth.
I was so proud of her and the nurse was saying "she's so cute"😁
They gave us some sanitizer and vaseline type stuff and checked her all over for other injuries.
Given the all clear we were discharged with around 45 minutes of first arriving.

When we got back to the villa I called the insurance company to log our claim. The have told me to submit any information from the hospital and they will pay the bill directly.
Thank you for reading, hopefully tomorrow we will be going sea fishing.

[Vinniecat]

Fantastic day apart from the injury it sounds like something my children would do. I love seeing different wildlife.

[pretty_lucky]

How traumatic! I hope Lily is feeling much better now.

I absolutely love Marco but we haven’t been in about 13 years. Our favourite place to eat was the Snook Inn. The conch chowder and the view. Paradise.

Have a lovely rest of your trip!

[lottiesmum0]

Ouch poor thing! We’ve been to the same beach! It’s like arriving on a desert island!

[spenners]

Hope your daughter is feeling better soon, she is a lot braver than me.

[show_the_magic]

Oooh bless her that is a painful accident! I hope she is ok now.
Rest of the day sounds lovely!

[cartoonp]

Arr poor thing hope she ok know hugs 🤗

[col2501]

Poor Lily, hope she’s okay now, really interesting day, it’s not for me, but I love reading about other things that people do!

[JellyEllieBean]

Poor Lily, how brave of her, hope she’s feeling lots better now xxx the rest of the day sounds amazing xx

ETA your insurance firm sound good, who are you with?

[Lisatink]

Originally Posted by JellyEllieBean

Poor Lily, how brave of her, hope she’s feeling lots better now xxx the rest of the day sounds amazing xx

ETA your insurance firm sound good, who are you with?

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She is in quite a bit of pain but she's a good girl and is getting on with it.
We bank with Nationwide and pay £12 a month which covers holiday insurance, mobile phone and roadside assistance. X