My firstborn is not much of the adventurous type. And yet.... last week she took a swan dive off the second-floor balcony of a Dutch-style garage at her grandparents house. She landed ON their driveway.
We aren't exactly sure how it happened. My mother had just brought the kids home from a day of errands and adventures. It was about 4:45, and my dad had just gotten home from work. He was "tasked" to watch the kids as they played outdoors. My son is a sweaty little dude and it was hot, so my dad decided to get them some water. My eldest had just started walking up the exterior stairs when my father told her to "Get down from there" before he headed inside. While inside, he grabbed their water and some stale bread to feed the turtles in the pond beside their house.
He was gone for maybe one minute.
In the span of sixty seconds, my child climbed the stairs, leaned against the railing, broke said railing, and went flying between the top rail and the balcony platform, FOURTEEN FEET to the concrete driveway below.
My father didn't see the fall. He saw my daughter getting herself up off the ground, crying, bloody mouth and nose. My son protested that he saw her fall and was a bit freaked out about the blood. He was given a popsicle and escorted indoors and was henceforth oblivious to all that followed. My daughter carried herself indoors of her own volition. She had wet her pants at some point during this fall or immediately after, and she changed her clothes. All was thought to be well because my dad thought she fell while running on the ground. But she told him, "No, I was up there," and pointed to their garage. Then, he saw the broken railing. Then, she wanted to go to sleep - a sure sign of a concussion. So, after some consultation with nurse-friends and us (the parents), they called 9-1-1.
Paramedics arrived and began doing some cognitive awareness testing. They asked her name, age, birthday, and the like. My daughter turned to my mother and said, "Nana, will you answer their questions so I don't have to?" She was still sassy! She protested when they made her get on the backboard with a neck brace. My dad convinced her it was a princess crown you could wear on your neck. How that logic worked, I'll never know. I guess you have to be six years old to get it.
My mom rode in the ambulance with her. They had to keep her awake because she kept trying to fall asleep. She had a full body CT scan, during which they found no internal bleeding, no brain swelling, no hemorrhage, an no inflammation. They did, however, find a basal skull fracture running from about the top curve of her skull to about the middle of her forehead. The two bones were not misaligned, and there seemed to be no concern that she would be leaking cerebrospinal fluid or have any swelling or bleeding there. You can't even see a bump or scratch there. It's on the inside.
What you could see by day two, were the tell-tale raccoon eyes of a child with a head injury. Both eyes grew black. One swelled shut. She had a couple of scrapes on her cheek and nose. She had a hematoma on her knee, where it obviously had made a big part of the impact. She was kept overnight in the hospital. My mother stayed with her, bless her!
The hard part for me was not rushing to her, not being there for her. My baby girl! There was nothing I could do but be a mom, which would have been more than enough I'm sure. But, I knew she was in good hands and that my being present would take moving heaven and earth. Being military (and since this occurred after business hours), I would have had a nightmare on my hands trying to secure emergency leave and drive the 5 hours (after a full day's work) to my parents' hometown. I would have missed my first day of clinical training at my practicum site. I would have done all of these things in a second, if I had felt I needed to. But I didn't need to.
The second hardest part was controlling my reaction to seeing her in person for the first time after it had happened. My child is not self-conscious in the least. But I didn't want to scare her or make her worried if I reacted poorly to her injuries.
Now, five days after the accident, she is back to her sassy, bossy self. One black eye is cleared up. The other will clear in a few days. The scrape on her nose is gone, and the one on her cheek will hopefully clear up in a couple of weeks. Her knee isn't swollen, and the bruising is almost gone. No other broken bones, no spinal injury, no permanent (we think) repercussions of her concussion.
She starts first grade tomorrow. We will take her out after a half-day, to have a follow-up appointment. I think the hardest part of all will be telling an active six-year-old that she can't run and jump on the playground at recess, that her feet must be on the ground at all times, that she cannot go back to Taekwondo for three months, and that she can't wrestle with her brother. I mean, we do tell her that last thing, but it hasn't worked yet. How does one keep a bird on the ground?
The thing we have learned is that it only takes a minute for something bad to happen. The consequences of one brief action could be long-term - and that is the lesson I hope our daughter learns from all of this. That, and, when Papa tells you to get down, GET DOWN!
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