If you know me at all, you know that Christmas is actually my least favorite holiday. Something crazy ALWAYS happens at Christmas. One year, my Grandpa died. One year, Donnie was in the hospital with a diverticulitis attack. One year, I was in the hospital with a kidney stone. Actually, those last 2 were the same year. Coincidently, Cora was also born that same Christmas, too, and as such, that wasn’t a good year for her because she was born sick and no one held her for WEEKS after she was born. Two years ago, both kids had the ugly puking stomach bug and Cora got dehydrated and spent three nights in the hospital.
Christmas is also a fantastic time for people to start fighting! People get stressed out and then act ridiculous. Christmas is also a fantastic time to get sick, or injured, or BOTH!
This year is turning out to be no different. We are less than 2 weeks away from Christmas. Let the madness begin!
The weekend started out very normal. We went to our annual Christmas party at our friends’ house Friday night. That was a lot of fun. They do a Christmas party ever year, and each year, they choose a different nationality as their theme. We’ve done German, Swedish, Italian, and this year’s theme was French! We always play a really fun gift exchange game and then sit around laughing with one another. It is always a blast!
Saturday, we went to a surprise birthday party for my friend Heather at my church. She turned 30 and her husband planned this wonderful party with all of her friends and family. Being a surprise party, everyone else showed up pretty early, and while we were waiting, the kids were all running around and playing and being silly.
As Donnie and I were sitting at a table waiting, we heard crying. I jumped up to see if it was one of my children crying. It wasn’t. It was a little girl around Clay’s age. She had bumped her face and her lip was bleeding. Her mom was attending to her, and I sat back down.
Next thing I know, Heather’s sister-in-law came running up to me and said, “You need to come. Clay is hurt.” I went running out of the room, and Heather’s brother-in-law had gotten to Clay first. He was holding a sobbing Clay. He handed him to me, and Clay buried his face into my neck just balling.
They told me that Clay and the little girl were both running around the same corner, opposite directions, and collided into each other’s faces. Her tooth cut his forehead. Then they bounced off of each other. She landed on the floor with a busted lip, and the other side of Clay’s head slammed into the corner of a concrete wall.
I tried to put Clay down because he’s heavy, but he couldn’t walk straight. It had knocked him very dizzy and disoriented. We went back to the table and I sat him down. I looked him over. His forehead was cut, but it wasn’t actively bleeding. He had a bump on the side of his head where he hit the wall. That was a bit concerning.
So I did my initial evaluation of him. I made him answer a bunch of questions, checking his short and long term memory. I made him walk. He was a little dizzy, but still able to walk. I checked his pupils and they were dilating appropriately with light. I decided to just wait it out and watch him for other signs of concussion.
The day went on, and he had a headache and was a little “off” all day, but not enough that I thought it warranted a trip to the ER.
Then Sunday morning, he woke up VERY early and said that his belly didn’t feel good. I assumed it was his head injury, and did a full check of him again. But this time, he was in zero pain, still a little dizzy, but better, and his pupils still looked fine. I kept him home from church, and he just wasn’t himself. He had no appetite and was really mopey. But it still didn’t feel like we needed to go to the ER.
Sunday afternoon, he fell asleep on the couch. He slept awhile, which isn’t really like him, but after the long, busy weekend, I let him rest. At supper, Donnie woke him up and made him come to the dinner table. But he was really off.
His face was bright red. He stumbled the entire walk to the table, worse than Saturday after he hit his head. And his eyes were bloodshot, and he seemed to be having a hard time focusing on anything. He said he felt really gross and wanted to go back to sleep.
Immediately, I decided he needed to at least go to urgent care. We got ready, and he and I left. We went to urgent care near our house first, and upon one look at his symptoms, the doctor said I needed to take him to Children’s right away. We jumped back in the car and headed to the ER.
To say that Children’s ER was crowded, that would be an understatement. There wasn’t even room in the ER parking lot to park the car. Then we got inside and signed in, and it was literally standing room only. There were people everywhere! Then I overheard someone say that the wait time to see a doctor was 4 hours! I wanted to die.
But we waited. After an hour, Clay was really starting to deteriorate. He told me something, and I couldn’t understand it. He was slurring his words! I panicked, and went back to the registration desk to tell them what was going on. A nurse came out into the waiting room to check his vitals. Then shortly after that, we were called back into triage.
In triage, he actually passed all of their initial concussion tests, but discovered he was running a temperature of over 104! The nurse said that at this point, it would be an additional 5 hours waiting in the waiting room before we could see a doctor. I wanted to cry! But she told me about their urgent care, which was also in the hospital, and would only be a 90 minute wait to see a doctor.
We decided to go there, and there we only had to wait about 45 minutes to see a doctor. After giving him the entire history of the head injury and the fever, he asked me if I had a medical background. I found that funny, considering I am the mother of a medically complex child. That probably does give me a “medical background” in this situation.
He decided, though, that the fever is unrelated to the head injury, but that we are dealing with 2 very different things. He said he does think Clay is suffering from a minor concussion, and praised me for how calm I remained and how well I handled his care on Saturday. He said that in theory, the dizziness alone warranted a trip to the ER, but that I did everything they would have done and handled it very well. (Little did he know that I was totally freaking out on the inside and doing everything I could in my power not to let Clay realize how scared I was!!)
He also thinks that Clay woke up Sunday morning with a virus of sorts, causing a very high fever, and that it was the fever that caused the dizziness and words slurring Sunday, and not the concussion from Saturday.
After giving Clay Tylenol and getting his temperature down to around 100, they sent us home with instructions to treat fever with Tylenol or Motrin and push lots and lots of fluids. Once his temperature dropped a little, he did perk up and was very thirsty.
Then, he woke up this morning completely fever and pain free. It’s a miracle!
But so begins the craziness that always surrounds Christmas. Let this fun season begin!
Angie Maddox 