Humility

Jacob in the ER

Within 24 hours of my last post we had another first: Jacob's first trip to the Emergency Room. Before I get to the story I will start with he is fine. We were at a church pot luck on a Saturday afternoon and both boys were running around with some other kids. We were in a courtyard by the rectory. The courtyard has a ramp around the perimeter so that the rectory is handicapped accessible. The ramp has a "curb" but no railing. For awhile each of the boys walked on the curb like a balance beam. I let Jacob have a little freedom with that but held Alex's hand. At the highest point, the ledge is about 4 feet up. Now here is where the humility comes in. In the middle of the courtyard there is a lemon tree and many of the kids were climbing up in the tree and throwing lemons at each other. I thought to myself surely someone is going to get hurt here...I can't believe the parents aren't stepping in. Joke was on me. Some of the parents did step in and the kids proceeded to run up and down the ramp. I stood with a group of adults and we talked about how boys especially need to just burn off energy. I was standing facing the kids and keeping an eye on Jacob so I saw the whole thing: he turned to see who was running behind him, got too close to the ledge and lost his balance. For a fraction of a second it looked like he was going to catch himself, but that was not enough time to get over there. He lost his balance and fell three and a half feet, head first, on to concrete. In that moment, I never imagined that things would work out the way they did.

He started crying immediately which was a good sign. Chris jumped the wall and was next to him less than a second after he hit the ground. Alex saw Jacob's shoe sitting on the top of the ramp where he went over and become obsessed with getting the shoe back on Jacob's foot. Chris proceeded to evaluate Jacob and although he seemed fine I felt strongly that he needed to go to the ER. At that moment we realized that just outside the courtyard there was a cookout going on for a group of reserve firemen. I ran out and interrupted them and THEY came and evaluated Jacob. They called their station and had the paramedics come. No lights, no siren, but a fire truck was in the parking lot two minutes later. Alex was now obsessed with the fire truck so I missed most of Jacob's evaluation. But they all came to the same conclusion we had: he seems fine but given the way he fell he really needed to go to the ER. We took him ourselves rather than calling an ambulance since every indication was that he was fine. That gave me a chance to talk to him a little bit, warn him about what was going to happen next, and gauge all of the things the doctors were about to ask.

At this point I should say that the most common response to this story has been "you mean you haven't had to take him yet?". After all, he knocked out a front tooth and generally finds new ways to defy the laws of physics basically every day. Believe me I know - it's amazing it's taken this long. But when he knocked his tooth out we called the advice nurse and she told us that there was nothing they would do in the ER as long as the bleeding had stopped, which it had. He has spoken to paramedics before, but not to the ER.

In any case, that was the day. The staff was great. One problem we always have with Jacob is that he looks so much older than he is. And the kinds of questions they ask after a head injury can be difficult to assess in a preschooler. Is his balance off? Is his vision blurry? Is his speech unclear? Does he seem disoriented? It's getting better as he gets older, but still not the easiest to assess. We only had to wait for about half an hour before they called us back. I went with Jacob while Chris took Alex outside. The best indication that Jacob was fine was that he was sitting in the hospital bed leaning all the way over going "Hey! This bed has wheels!" In the words of the medical staff that saw him, he is a very active little boy. He clearly could not sit still even while being examined. The nurse told him that the bed was really a spaceship and if he counted to 10 it would go up and down. He had such a great time. And the medical staff ultimately decided that he was clearly fine. The next day we went to Mass and many of the people who had been at the potluck were there. Those that weren't had no idea of the drama the day before because looking at Jacob there was no way of knowing. He had a couple scrapes, but the bump had gone down and it never did bruise.

That Monday Chris went out of town for work. He very rarely travels for work but it just so happened that he needed to go to Utah of all places. He was gone for 3 days. Not even 3 full days - he came back Wednesday afternoon. But in that time the boys and I all developed colds and the boys had picture day at school. We are now all recovering from the colds (including Chris at this point). But I'll be honest, it has totally wiped us out. I had all sorts of plans to clean up and prepare a bunch of food so that I can stock the freezer. We have a very busy October coming up and I am having surgery at the beginning of November so I'm going a little crazy with all the things I want to get done. But BAM! All of it went out the window between having a cold, the pain I was already having, and having to take care of the boys. But for all of that everything turned out just fine. And once again I was reminded that it is all going to be alright.