With three boys who are relatively close in age, I grew used to them falling, bonking their heads, and getting stitches. More than used to, I hardly flinched, but now they are older and less likely to do that stuff. With the larger age difference between Bella and the trio, I had kinda forgotten about this part.
On Friday night Bella was being her normal crazy self and climbing on the couches. I changed her into her pj's, not really thinking about her climbing in footie jammies. I was sitting on the couch right next to her as she slipped and fell flat back on to the hard wood floor. HARD. The sound it made was just awful and I KNEW it wasn't ok. She started crying right away and did for a few minutes. Then she calmed down and asked for Dora to be put on. She was acting a little off and my gut said something was wrong. I paged her doctor and they called back right away. After I explained what happened they read me off they list of things to watch for, the same list I have had memorized for 12 years. Dizziness, loss of balance, nonreactive pupils, vomiting, and obviously loss of consciousness are the major ones, I was told to call again if any of those things happened. Just as I started to think she was fine, she threw up everywhere.
I threw the whole family in the van and drove to After Hours Pediatrics. They normally handle any issues we have, but after hearing what happened they sent us straight to the Children's Hospital. As a side note, our van's water pump is pretty much dead, spewing water everywhere, but we didn't think of that and just drove. As we pulled up to the ER, the valets pointed out our van was smoking badly, I left Neil to deal and ran Bella inside. My sister came and took the boys home her in car, so the van could cool down and Neil could stay with us.
There was no one at the check-in desk, as we waited, Bella started throwing up again and just couldn't stop. She pretty much covered the whole waiting room , especially me. Finally someone came to get us and put us directly in a room. Let me say I was NOT impressed with the care we got at this hospital. They never triaged her at all. After an hour in the room the PA came in and said they were going to give her nausea meds, a sedative, and do a CT. She never even TOUCHED Bella. Obviously, I was not thrilled with sedating my toddler or doing a CT if it wasn't needed. But they insisted this was protocol. The nurse came in and gave Bella her meds and they hit almost immediately. Bella was more than a little hilarious on the sedative, but one thing she wasn't was SLEEPING!? That was the whole point, right? After and hour even the goofiness wore off and she was just plain PISSED. I paged the nurse and told the desk that Bella was NOT sedated at all, but no one ever came.
The transport guy arrive about 30 minutes after I had paged the nurse to take us to CT. He was shocked she was not only awake, but screaming. As soon as CT saw her, they said there was no way they could do the scan with her thrashing and sent us back to the ER. Once back in the room, they came and gave her a large dose of benedryl. After an hour of nursing and all those meds, she finally passed out.
We tip toed back to CT and they were able to do the scan. Luckily the results were read quickly, as it was 2am. They saw a contusion at the back of her head and determined she had a mild concussion. We were sent home with a script of zofran and orders to watch her closely.
Thank God she is back to her normal bossy, wild self and seems ok. I am still watching her like a hawk though. With all these boys, who would have imagined our first concussion would be our little princess!?
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