The Flight Fall

Well, by Wednesday afternoon I had a post all ready to publish even if it was a little on the long-winded side and was rather 'depressed' sounding. Ok, 'rather' might not accurately describe it since Sir decided it was too negative to post and strongly suggested I not post it. At least writing it out made me feel better though.

Then that evening we ended up at the hospital.

Ha! Let me guess, your heart rate just doubled in anticipation. But no, we still have just the two children. In fact, the baby seems so comfortable, that I'm guessing it's going to have to be kicked out. At least that's what the Dr. indicated at my appointment yesterday. "If you're still waiting for this little one in a week from now, we'll just have to give it a little nudge. You've done your time and Baby will find a comfortable home OUTSIDE of Mommy's tummy just as easily."

That was encouraging to me because FINALLY there's an end in sight. So unless the baby changes it's mind and decides to come out and see the world - delivering me of being pregnant - I'll definitely be a mom to three in 7 or 8 days from now! Hooray!

But that's not what I was planning to write about tonight.

Wednesday. Sir called from work to make sure I was up from my nap so I could get the kids ready to go to our weekly prayer/reading meeting. Meeting night is usually a rushed evening for us, because there's about a 15 minute window of time between Sir getting home from work and when we need to leave for meeting. It also means that the kids and I have to eat earlier than usual in order to get supper out of the way before we go. This is not the easiest because my kids don't seem hungry enough by the time we eat to act like they have an appetite. Consequently, I spend the meal constantly prompting and directing them to eat their dinner.

Anyway, the kids got to eat until it was time to go, and then I covered their food with plastic wrap, tossed it into the box to go to meeting and scrubbed the kids up while getting their shoes on them. Then we rushed out the door. I carried the box with our bibles and the kids' pajamas in it and had the diaper bag slung over my shoulder, Dolly followed me carrying a Raggedy Ann doll, and Sir was bringing up the rear with PC in one arm and his laptop slung over the other.

When I was nearly halfway down the stairs disaster struck. Dolly, who had only made it to the third step down, suddenly lost her balance and pitched OVER the middle rail landing face down on the concrete nine and a half feet below. I didn't know I could run down the stairs so fast with my hands so full. As I hit the bottom step I dropped everything and rushed to my whimpering/crying daughter's side. At the same time Sir plopped PC back inside the house and closed the door in one move to rush to our aid. I peeled Dolly off the ground and couldn't keep back the little cry that escaped as I saw the blood all over her face. I called up to Sir to get some ice and I picked Dolly up and helped her stand. I asked her to take some steps and still crying, she managed a few before I scooped her up and carried her up the stairs. Her whole body was trembling and her crying just wrenched my heart.

Once upstairs, we put the towel-wrapped ice on her forehead and looked her over for more injuries. I finally dabbed enough blood from her mouth to reassure myself that she still had all of her teeth. She had a big hole inside her bottom lip where her teeth had embedded themselves thus explaining so much blood everywhere. I instructed Dolly to wiggle her fingers one hand at a time. She was able to move the fingers on her left hand, but when it came to her right side, all she could do was raise her arm. She wouldn't even try to move her fingers. So, we decided to take our little girl to the ER. Sir called his parents and asked them to keep PC and then we made our second attempt to get in the van.

After dropping PC off with Grandpa and Grandma, we headed to the hospital. Dolly had slipped into a drowsy kind of state. She was awake, but her eyes would droop often, and although she would answer us when we talked to her, she didn't say very much more than: "I don't want to go to the doctor!" and "I don't hurt." when we'd explain what we were doing and why. Sir dropped us off at the emergency entrance and went to park the car. I took a number and found a seat where I could rock and soothe my frightened and hurting little one. We were number 41 and the triage nurse was working on number 34. When Sir joined us ten minutes later they were working on number 37 and had skipped a number since no one answered when it was called.

Then the neatest thing happened. An EMT started going from patient to patient, starting with number 38, taking vital signs and jotting information down on a piece of paper before giving the paper to the patient and moving on to the next. It made a huge different on how fast people were moving through triage. The triage nurse was working with whoever was number 38 when the EMT got to us. He asked us what had happened as he put an oxygen sensor on Dolly's finger. We told him that she'd fallen about ten feet over the railing on the outside stairs and had landed on concrete. Then he asked us how old Dolly was and said, "I'll be- right- back." He disappeared behind the triage booths and was back in about two minutes saying, "Ok, you guys are next." And just like that we were talking to the triage nurse and five minutes later we were in the pediatric department, Dolly had a temporary splint on her right arm, and the pediatric nurse was carefully looking Dolly over.

Dolly was afraid of all the gadgets like the blood pressure cuff, the oxygen sensor, the stethoscope and thermometer, but soon all there was left to do was wait for the doctor to get to us. He came about 20 minutes later and after a quick look at Dolly, he ordered x-rays. That's when the real wait began. We waited about an hour before finally being sent over to the x-ray department. Then we waited another half hour before it was our turn for x-rays. Sir went in with Dolly when they did the x-rays and it seemed like forever before they came back out to where I was waiting. It was probably closer to 15 or 20 minutes in reality. Then we went back to the pediatric department to wait for the doctor to come back.

It was already around 10 by the time we got back to the pediatric ward. Dolly had snapped out of her drowsy state just before the doctor ordered us for x-rays around 8pm. It was a huge relief to see her acting normal again. But for me, relief came with overwhelming exhaustion and all I wanted to do was go to sleep. The doctor returned around quarter after 10 to tell us that Dolly's head x-rays looked fine, as did the left arm pictures, but she did have a small hairline fracture on her right wrist. He said the bones were perfectly aligned and that since she was so young it wouldn't take very long before she was as good as new. And since that was the case, she didn't need a cast. Instead he'd put a little splint on her arm. That way it could be taken off for baths and when she started getting tired of having it on. The doctor told us she should be just about as good as new in about a week. Then he went and got the stuff he needed for her splint, came back, wrapped her arm up and said we could go home.

After we left the hospital, we grabbed some chicken nuggets from McDonald's for Dolly as a reward for being so brave at the doctor's. Then we swung by Grandpa and Grandma's house to pick PC up. I was so glad that we didn't have to have both kids at the hospital. I was also very glad that we live less than five minutes from Sir's parent's house because it meant we could get to bed sooner.

I had to wake Dolly up every couple of hours during the night because her fall had involved her head, but she knew who she was and who I was each time I disturbed her, which is what they wanted us to monitor. We got a couple pictures of Dolly at the hospital with the cell phone, and then I took some more pictures on the camera yesterday and today, but basically none of them turned out very well.

With the exception of learning to adjust to a tender arm, Dolly is back to her old self, but she still looks awful. I noticed swelling on her face today, but there isn't really anything that can be done about that very easily. And she's not the one complaining about one eye being smaller than the other.

I should go. It's time to put my little ones to bed. PC has been standing at my knee practically begging to be put out of his misery. Hm, I guess I ended up with a long-winded post after all! Oh well, maybe it'll make up for my lack of posting recently!