It goes like this, yesterday afternoon I was trying to fill out some Girl Scout papers that were due that night. I got interrupted and then Timothy was riding his scooter over them. I told him not to, he continued, I told him again, and still he continued, so I removed him from the scooter. I forget what I was doing at the time but I was right in front of Tom's chair and that was where I set Timothy down. He started throwing a temper tantrum. He's the only one of my kids who actually does the whole physical tantrum-throws his body on the floor, kicking and yelling, etc. Well yesterday he started jumping up and down and actually somehow managed to throw his body backwards, up and over the arm of the chair. It was quite a feat, and honestly looked pretty comical. All I knew was he landed on his butt and burst into tears. He was crying pretty hard but at the time I thought it was mainly out of surprise. I picked him up and held him and in a few minutes he had stopped crying. I had no idea he had hit his head. This was right before I left to pick Leanna up from school.
Fast forward a few hours. Tom's on his way home early because he has a bad headache, and Leanna has Girl Scouts that night. After he gets home I notice it looks like Timothy has gotten jelly in his hair again. I touch it and then it looks a little funny, then I see blood on my arm where I was holding him and I look closer. Part of it is just cut and part of it is actually split open and looks pretty gross. That picture I posted doesn't do it justice. He had to have hit his head on either the end table or the radiator. We're thinking we'll have to go to the ER and Tom's already mad because he has this headache and doen't feel like doing anything.
We actually didn't wait all that long to be seen, there were only about 3 people waiting there ahead of us. And sure enough, the doctor glances at it and says he need stitches. We have to take the other kids out of the room, so I decided to leave Tom with Timothy since I know I'll be able to handle Jacob better, and particularly when Tom has a headache. Also, I'm not a fan of needles. But I really wished I could be in there to comfort him. They used what the doctor called a
huggie board to strap him down. Though knowing Timothy, that was
unnecessary. I didn't tell the doctor that though, because they never believe me anyway. He ended up getting three
stitches. We left and headed for Girl Scouts, late already for her second meeting. On the way there Timothy threw up, and ended up doing it 3 more times. On the instruction paper we were given throwing up and
nausea were listed as symptoms to call or go back to the ER for, so I ran Leanna in, late, and had to announce to the circle of girl scouts and the leader that we might be a little late picking her up as we had to rush back to the ER for her brother.
The throwing up was even more worrying, as Timothy started falling asleep as soon as he finished. I kept calling his name and tapping him to keep him awake. I asked the people at the ER desk if he needed to be seen again, and the girl replied, if it will make you feel better. Well, considering the papers said to return to your provider, and the falling asleep thing, I said, "YES! It would make me feel better!" So I brought him in, covered in throw up from mouth to the bottom of his pants legs. The nurse and I cleaned him up and they got him some new clothes. After getting cleaned up Timothy seemed to wake up a bit and acted more like himself. We waited in a room for a wheelchair to take him for a cat scan. Tom had to leave when the wheel chair arrived, to pick up Leanna, he took Justin with him. The man had an extra wide wheel chair so he had me sit in it with Timothy and Jacob on my lap. He joked with the technician that we were seated like that for a family portrait. She said wow! the whole family, and I said, no this is just half of us. The cat scan part was scary for Timothy. He had to lay still on this huge noisy machine and we had to go behind a wall so he was all alone in the room. I saw his little skull on the screen and it looked so very tiny. He seemed so fragile that night. Although he's very small and has this tiny little voice I don't usually think of him as fragile at all because he's so tough. He's constantly climbing and running and jumping and
being fearless.
The technician said he was the stillest 3 year old she'd ever had. Timothy tends to freeze when he's scared, that's why he does so well with haircuts and doctor visits. Justin is his exact opposite, when faced with a scary situation like that he generally goes into hysterics, crying and hanging onto me. But it look less than two minutes and then we were wheeled back to wait for results. That was the longest part, they said at night it takes a lot longer. A female doctor came in to check Timothy's eyes, ears, and general reflexes. She said that the throwing up tells them it was a concussion. The brain reacts different ways to a bump like that and nausea and throwing up is just one of the ways it can deal with it. The cat scan was to make sure there were no internal injuries or bleeding. She put up the sides of the bed he was waiting on when he tried to jump up on the bed, and she informed me that second head injuries most often happen the first week after the first injury! She was really friendly and great with Timothy. When she checked his ears she told him that he tool she was using looked like a
tv, and he agreed, so she said, lets just see what program is on in your ears! What a great strategy. When she checked his eyes she said, lets play with flashlights,
this'll look cool! With Timothy she didn't
need to do that, but it was nice because it helped relax him. Tom came in with Leanna and Justin and we all waited there for what seemed like forever. The cat scan eventually came back negative, so they just said to wake him up every two hours at night to make sure and of course to call if anything was abnormal. As we left an ER nurse told us that the kids were very well behaved. Tom said "really?" and she said "oh yes! You would never know there were that many kids here tonight!"
He has an
appt. for Monday morning to be checked and in 7 days they'll take his stitches out. We got home at 8:50 at night, it was quite an evening!
