"A house fell on my head."
The title of this post is a quote from T.
So, it looks like all the snow and the unplowed roads were not the most exciting (and by exciting I don't mean fun) event of the day. That was topped by T flooding the downstairs bathroom. He clogged up the toilet and screamed that the water was running and I came in to find half of my floor covered with about a 1/4 inch of toilet water with more flowing from the bowl. I got it all cleaned up, but not fast enough to prevent it from seeping through the floorboards to the basement which Chriss is now cleaning up.
But even that was topped by what happened when I told T to go pick out a bedtime story while I folded his laundry.
So there I am, in my bedroom folding T's freshly laundered clothes. Chriss is on the phone with his dad. It's an hour past T's bedtime, but hey, it's Christmas vacation, why not let him stay up a little? Still, I could use the rest of the night to myself so whether Chriss is off the phone or not, I'm putting T to bed when I finish with the laundry. I send him to his room to pick out a book. We keep them in his closet which has 3 bookshelves built into the wall with one higher shelf spanning the length of the closet.
Suddenly I hear a crash followed by T screaming. I race into his room to find half the stuff from the two top shelves on the floor of his closet. He's holding his head and pointing to a ceramic house that his great-grandma gave him last year. (It's roughly the length of a brick and twice the height). I hold him and kiss the top of his head and ask if he's okay. He says his head hurts and that the house hit him.
I hold him for a moment longer and look at the back of his pajama shirt. There's odd little red dots all over the back. I pull my hand away from his head and it's covered in blood.
Now, I know it didn't help things, but I didn't expect to see so much of my child's blood covering my hand and I freaked out. I screamed, Chriss came running up, I pull T out into the hall where I see the back of his head coated in blood. I grab a towel and Chriss presses it to the cut while I wash the blood off my hands and cheek (not sure how it got there). Then I washed the blood off T's hands so I could put his coat on. We got our coats and boots on, grabbed his diabetes bag and the house that hit him and drove to the ER.
Fortunately, the hospital is only a few blocks from our house. Not so fortunately, the snow plows SUCK at plowing the roads. Our street was blocked by snow, the turn lane to get in the hospital wasn't plowed and the entrance was blocked by snow as well. But we got there, they got us right in. The triage nurse washed enough blood away to see his cut. Thank goodness it wasn't very big. Maybe a 1/4 of an inch long, not too deep, but it was kinda wide.
She brought us to an exam room where we waited. We did a lot of that during the 3 1/2 hours we were there. The Dr. came, took a look, and after looking at the ceramic house that hit him, decided to do a CT scan. There was a chip in the ceramic and we didn't know if it was already there or not so the Dr. wanted to be sure there were no fragments in T's head, no fractures/cracks in his skull, etc. The scan turned out fine. The technician asked him what happened and he told her that a house fell on his head. Chriss said she looked really concerned until he explained it was a decoration. So that's where the post title came from.
We did even more waiting and then the Dr. returned, ready to close up the cut. Because it was on the wide side and in the back of his head where his hair was in the way, a bandage wasn't sufficient. T had to get it stapled closed. Only one staple though. And he was so brave. He squeezed our hands and cried a little, but he held still and did such a good job. They wrapped his head with gauze so he looks like soldier playing the flute in the painting Spirit of ''76.
Just as we were about to leave, we decided to test him because he was complaining of being thirsty so we thought he might be high. Turns out he was 52. And because of lows he'd had yesterday and today, I'd forgotten to replenish the juice boxes in his bag so we had to give him life savers and get some juice from the nurse. A mere 15 grams wasn't enough because he needs to be above 180 for bedtime.
Anyway, we got home, changed his pajamas, got him to bed, I got the blood rinsed out of his clothes and the towel, Chriss is mopping up the basement, and now I'm finished blogging about our eventful day.
So, it looks like all the snow and the unplowed roads were not the most exciting (and by exciting I don't mean fun) event of the day. That was topped by T flooding the downstairs bathroom. He clogged up the toilet and screamed that the water was running and I came in to find half of my floor covered with about a 1/4 inch of toilet water with more flowing from the bowl. I got it all cleaned up, but not fast enough to prevent it from seeping through the floorboards to the basement which Chriss is now cleaning up.
But even that was topped by what happened when I told T to go pick out a bedtime story while I folded his laundry.
So there I am, in my bedroom folding T's freshly laundered clothes. Chriss is on the phone with his dad. It's an hour past T's bedtime, but hey, it's Christmas vacation, why not let him stay up a little? Still, I could use the rest of the night to myself so whether Chriss is off the phone or not, I'm putting T to bed when I finish with the laundry. I send him to his room to pick out a book. We keep them in his closet which has 3 bookshelves built into the wall with one higher shelf spanning the length of the closet.
Suddenly I hear a crash followed by T screaming. I race into his room to find half the stuff from the two top shelves on the floor of his closet. He's holding his head and pointing to a ceramic house that his great-grandma gave him last year. (It's roughly the length of a brick and twice the height). I hold him and kiss the top of his head and ask if he's okay. He says his head hurts and that the house hit him.
I hold him for a moment longer and look at the back of his pajama shirt. There's odd little red dots all over the back. I pull my hand away from his head and it's covered in blood.
Now, I know it didn't help things, but I didn't expect to see so much of my child's blood covering my hand and I freaked out. I screamed, Chriss came running up, I pull T out into the hall where I see the back of his head coated in blood. I grab a towel and Chriss presses it to the cut while I wash the blood off my hands and cheek (not sure how it got there). Then I washed the blood off T's hands so I could put his coat on. We got our coats and boots on, grabbed his diabetes bag and the house that hit him and drove to the ER.
Fortunately, the hospital is only a few blocks from our house. Not so fortunately, the snow plows SUCK at plowing the roads. Our street was blocked by snow, the turn lane to get in the hospital wasn't plowed and the entrance was blocked by snow as well. But we got there, they got us right in. The triage nurse washed enough blood away to see his cut. Thank goodness it wasn't very big. Maybe a 1/4 of an inch long, not too deep, but it was kinda wide.
She brought us to an exam room where we waited. We did a lot of that during the 3 1/2 hours we were there. The Dr. came, took a look, and after looking at the ceramic house that hit him, decided to do a CT scan. There was a chip in the ceramic and we didn't know if it was already there or not so the Dr. wanted to be sure there were no fragments in T's head, no fractures/cracks in his skull, etc. The scan turned out fine. The technician asked him what happened and he told her that a house fell on his head. Chriss said she looked really concerned until he explained it was a decoration. So that's where the post title came from.
We did even more waiting and then the Dr. returned, ready to close up the cut. Because it was on the wide side and in the back of his head where his hair was in the way, a bandage wasn't sufficient. T had to get it stapled closed. Only one staple though. And he was so brave. He squeezed our hands and cried a little, but he held still and did such a good job. They wrapped his head with gauze so he looks like soldier playing the flute in the painting Spirit of ''76.
Just as we were about to leave, we decided to test him because he was complaining of being thirsty so we thought he might be high. Turns out he was 52. And because of lows he'd had yesterday and today, I'd forgotten to replenish the juice boxes in his bag so we had to give him life savers and get some juice from the nurse. A mere 15 grams wasn't enough because he needs to be above 180 for bedtime.
Anyway, we got home, changed his pajamas, got him to bed, I got the blood rinsed out of his clothes and the towel, Chriss is mopping up the basement, and now I'm finished blogging about our eventful day.