Mama Called the Doctor…

And the doctor said, “NO MORE KIDS FALLING ON THEIR HEADS!!!”

Wednesday afternoon the kids were sitting at the counter getting ready to eat lunch and Abby fell off her stool and hit her head (hard) on the tile floor. I helped her calm down and she sat down to eat. About 20 minutes later she said “I can see two of everything…” and then, “everything looks blurry!”

The alarms started going off in my head… I held up my fingers and she consistently counted more fingers than I held up. I called the pediatrician and rushed her to their office. By the time we got there Abby was pretty miserable. After she threw up, the doctor told us we needed to go to the ER to have a CAT scan. Johnny was working in New Jersey and couldn't get home for a few hours. So I dropped the boys off at a friend’s house, arranged for someone else to pick Lila up from school and headed to the ER.

(Abby, in the ER counting her fingers to check for double vision)

On the way to the hospital she threw up again and as we sat in the waiting room she slept in my arms for about an hour. It was scary.

Luckily the CAT scan was negative and by that point she had perked up a bit. They diagnosed her with a concussion and sent us home with instructions to take it easy.

Going in for the “CAT Thingy” (as she called it)

Two days later (almost to the exact minute) I was making lunch and Alex fell out of his high chair and hit his head on the tile floor. Same scenario. He started throwing up and then was just completely lethargic and sleepy.

So once again we headed to the pediatrician. Alex slept (a concerning, scary sleep) the whole way there.

Alex, sleeping in the car on the way to the doctor holding the classic “throw up bowl”

By the time we got there he seemed a little better. She checked him out and tried to determine if he had double vision (how do you tell if a 16 month old has double vision??). We decided the radiation risk of a CAT scan was too high so we didn’t get to go to the ER that time, but we got another diagnosis of a concussion. They sent us home and told us to call if he got worse and to “take it easy.”

When Johnny abruptly left work in the middle of the day again for the 2nd time in 3 days, his co-worker joked that you typically can only use the concussion excuse once a week to take off early. My mom said the doctors will probably think we were making up "excuses" too and decide to call social services on me!