I've been planning some update posts in my head--you know, one for each of my boys, one for my new short hair...but something happened that needs to come first. It's not fun and it's not pretty. But I need to put it up here for a couple reasons. One, so I can stop CRYING ALL THE TIME. When people ask me for particulars, I always start blubbering. I'm sure that I will cry typing this, but then I can direct people to this post when they would like to know the whole story. Secondly, I hope to warn you so it doesn't happen to your kids. Thirdly, hopefully it will be a healing journey--sorry that you have to come along for the ride.
On Friday, August 10th, We got up Reeeeeeally early. Isaac woke me up at 3:30--he had been all cuddled up next to me in bed, and there was milk EVERYWHERE. TMI? Probably. Anyways, I got up, pumped, tried to sleep, but Jonah woke up hungry before I got there. While I was feeding him, Mike's alarm clock rang--5 o'clock: time to get ready to go!
We were heading up to Lauren and Kirby's house in Washington State to visit with them before going to a reunion up there. It was going to be so fun! The boys could not WAIT to get up and get going. We kept saying that we'd leave "tomorrow morning" and Gregory would get mad--we told him we'd leave before sunrise, which could only mean night time.
The trip there was blessedly uneventful. Minus a couple of "are we there yet's" which started after we'd driven a half an hour. 14 hours of basically straight driving later, we were there.
Lauren and Kirby were gracious hosts and we let the kids play a bit before we tried to get them to "go to sleep." COUSINS!!!! We sat downstairs trying to watch the Olympics while we waited for them to fall asleep. We were pretty much dead tired. It had been a loooong day. We kept going up and threatening the kids with anything we could think of to get them to go to sleep, but they were having too much fun.
Brace yourselves for this next part--it's not fun.
Then we heard a sound that continues to play through my head whenever I don't have something to drive it out of my thoughts. A loud, crunching thud which I first thought must be something quite heavy thrown down the stairs but which was actually the sound of my child's head hitting concrete after falling about 14 feet. And Lauren's child too, but I was a little bit focused on mine at the moment.
Kirby went tearing out to the backyard and we were on his heels. The children were whimpering in a pile on the ground. Isaac's foot was caught in the remains of the screen that they apparently thought would keep them safely inside. We got that off of him and could tell that we had to get to the hospital pronto--Isaac's eyes were rolled back in his head and his skull was swelling rapidly.
Mike drove while Kirby held Emily in the back and I held Isaac--desperately trying to keep our kids from losing consciousness. Mike struggled to hear the directions Kirby was shouting from the back over the moaning of those precious broken babies. We made that drive to the hospital several times after that night, and always I was amazed that it went so quickly that first time. Mike says he was going..ahem...slightly faster than the posted speed limit signs. We figured if someone tried to stop us we'd let them follow us to the hospital and we'd deal with that after we got checked in. Luckily, no one tried.
After that it gets pretty blurry. I was not comforted by the amounts of people rushing around helping--this was serious. And it was my baby. We waited for our turn at the CT scanner. Emily needed to go first and there was someone else that needed one too. They put a neck brace on Isaac and we held his hands and sang to him so he could stay calm. He did NOT want that oxygen tube in his nose. His right hand kept opening and closing convulsively in what I later learned was a focal seizure, so they started him on anti-seizure meds. His IV was "positional" (is that nurse-code for "done badly?") so if he moved his arm at all the machine would beep loudly until the nurse fixed it.
Meanwhile, we tried to keep tabs on Kirby and Emily across the trauma unit. Emily needed a breathing tube and they we even more worried about her than Isaac. I felt so guilty that I had Mike to hold on to but Lauren had to be at the house with Gregory, Jonah, and Sydney. It's a good thing Kirby and Lauren are both tougher than me.
We had a doctor-free minute for the men to give our kids blessings. They were beautiful and spoke of complete healing and peace. Throughout the entire ordeal (except maybe when I was blindly sobbing and stumbling into the hospital after parking the car) I could feel Heavenly Father's Spirit telling me that everything would be okay. As long as I held onto that feeling, I was okay. If I let it slip, the hysteria started welling up and all the horrible "what-if's" tried to drown me.
Isaac threw up in the CT scan. Since his head was being held in place, the vomit pooled directly on his face--covering his eyes, nose, and mouth. We spent the whole scan time singing primary songs and holding his hands when we could. It was amazing to see the effect of those beautiful songs on our suffering boy. They were the only thing that could calm him down. Blessedly, they also calmed us down. and brought a beautiful spirit to that room.
Then we waited and waited and waited. We found out that Isaac had a v-shaped skull fracture behind his left ear. It was on top of a major blood vessel, so the doctors were (are still) hoping that it would heal itself so they wouldn't have to perform surgery in such a tricky place. They also worried that the vessel may be damaged, cutting off flow of blood to the brain. IN addition, he had a
subdural hematoma, which meant that blood was gathering between the brain and the top layer that protects it. Miraculously, besides a couple abrasions on the top of his head and his elbow, nothing else was broken!
Finally we got up to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) and they took incredible care of us.
You can see the several inches of swelling pretty well in these pictures--see how his ear is slanted as well? He slept most of the day Saturday, and when he was awake he was miserable. He couldn't communicate with us at all--unless you count trying to remove all of the monitors and IV from his body.
Mike and I tried to grab some sleep once we got him in his room and settled. Mike had been up for 25 or so hours straight, and I had only had a couple of restless hours of sleep in the car. We were basically wrecks. And then of course, when we tried to close our eyes, the sound came, the memory of them laying on the ground, and the guilt. Our pillows were not very dry. After Mike's exhaustion overcame him, I started pacing. The nurse came in and brought me some food which was a blessing because 1) my blood sugar was incredibly messed up and 2) it gave me something to concentrate on. Oh, spreading peanut butter on Saltine crackers at 5 a.m. through my tears, what a blessed memory.
Things started looking up on Sunday. I had slept at Lauren's house and took care of Gregory and Jonah. I got to the hospital and my sweet boy was standing up! He wanted to take a walk. The nurse suggested walking down the hall to the huge windows looking at the bridge into Washington. Isaac would not get close to the windows, oddly. He was doing so much better, but he was still having trouble talking. He would start saying something, and it would come out all garbled--like when you wake up trying to talk and it just won't work. It was frustrating for him and he would close off again. His left eye was also a vivid purple color.
The best sign of progress came when we would set baby Jonah down on Isaac's bed. Instant smiles and attempts at communication. It was so adorable to see how much they both loved each other!
Mom and Dad had arrived Saturday night and they brought us much needed sustenance (Taco Bell never tasted so incredible). The next afternoon, they headed off to the reunion with Gregory in tow. I was so grateful, because I didn't have to worry about keeping him entertained (and away from all the buttons and wires), and he could get some much needed attention. The poor guy was there when Isaac fell, but I don't think he understands the seriousness, because he doesn't seem to be scarred (thank heavens!).
That night, Mike's Aunt, Uncle, and cousins (who live near Lauren and Kirby) visited and brought us delicious food. We were so thankful for those enchiladas (and rolls and cookies and grapes and watermelon...YUM)! After they left, and after several hours of botched communication, we were able to leave the PICU and head up to the Pediatric Unit.
After the first night in the hospital, Isaac refused to sleep in the hospital bed, preferring to snuggle with Mommy or Daddy on our rock-couch (really? You couldn't make it even a little bit comfortable?).
Aww, cute picture of us both sleeping that Mike sneakily took.
We may have watched Cars 2 eight times. And Hoodwinked 2. We were in limbo, waiting for him to interact well enough and hold food down well enough to leave. There was a very fun playroom though--Isaac thought maybe we should stay a while longer to play in there. We vetoed that idea however, and on Tuesday afternoon (after waiting and waiting and waiting again), we were released!
Poor Isaac had been wanting to go HOME home (his first words were "I want Mommy" of course, but he soon favored the phrase, "I WANT TO GO HOME!!!" This was before he found the playroom, naturally). He was a little disappointed to stop at Lauren and Kirby's for a couple of days. We wanted to rest a bit, monitor him while we were close to the hospital, and wait for Gregory to come back. But early Thursday morning (3:15 to be exact), when Jonah woke Isaac and Mike up with his post-feeding cries, we decided to head out. After only one major incident (a melt-down at Dennys that will live in infamy forever), we arrived home.
Isaac is doing incredibly well. He makes progress every day in his emotional stability and his physical healing. We brought him to church today and he even consented to going to nursery after ten minutes of Sunday School. Mike sat with him through singing time and snuck out during snack time. Huzzah!
We are so grateful for the prayers of family and friends and for the gospel. This was a nightmare, but without the gospel? It would have been nearly unendurable. We are thankful for the competent and caring nurses we had. Maybe less grateful for Dr. Chen, the neurosurgeon that thought prodding Isaac on top of his fracture was a great way to gauge his responsiveness (do that again and I will prod YOU Dr. Chen...), but I'm sure that he was very competent too... We will be visiting a lot of doctors in the next few weeks, and hope to see some more miraculous improvement. Hopefully we will be able to stop giving Isaac anti-seizure meds as well--that's a battle that is not fun to fight (apparently it tastes pretty bad!).
Whew! I don't think I've ever written such a long post! But the take home message is, don't leave windows open where kids might happen upon them. Listen to the Spirit when he tells you to close them, and trust in Heavenly Father no matter what.
