that is what tori told
chris in the ER waiting room last night. and i think she was right.
i have great photos from the memorial day parade and pancake breakfast, but those will have to wait as i need to write this story down first. i know that we will remember this for a long time to come and it may even become one of those family stories that you laugh about in later years (because everything is ok) but the details will get lost if not recorded.
we had 3 other couples over for dinner last night. 8 adults and 6 kids all tolled. the kids ate first and were already finished and off playing, we had just finished eating as well when
out of the corner of our eyes, something dropped
onto the deck. that something was zoe. she was up in our bedroom and wanted to
wave at tori (out on the patio) and leaned on the screen. the screen gave way
and zo hit the deck. it took about 10 seconds for me to ask them to call 911. we
just had to…she fell out of the window! and she did her eyes into the back of
her head thing that she does when she hits her head but came back to me fairly
quickly. she was crying, there was blood from biting her tongue and scraping her
elbow but she seemed ok. still, I’m glad we called the
ambulance. we had a hard time getting her to lay still, so i ended up holding her in my arms while she cried to "go to my bed".
the EMTs came (heck, the whole fire
station team came and apparently a cop tagged along too but I didn’t even know
that) and zo was put into a collar, taped to a backboard and she and I took a
ride in an ambulance. my concern was obviously neck/head trauma but she seemed
to be acting pretty normally, albeit a bit scared. right before i got into the ambulance, the EMT told me that because of the distance of the fall (about 10-12') this would be treated as a trauma and they would have to put in an IV. this is when i questioned the sanity of calling 911 for a second.....sigh. but we had to know that she was ok so that second past fast and we all piled in the ambulance. and i mean all. i think there were 5 of us in there initially getting her hooked up to heart rate monitors, blood pressure cuff and the IV. frankly, the IV and blood
pressure cuff were almost worse than the fall (at least for
her).
we took off after she was all wired and they tried to give zo a little stuffed fox with a delnor shirt on (we live on the fox river and delnor is the hospital) and she was having none of it. she was clinging to her build-a-bear dog named sparkle and didn't need another stuffed animal. i admired her spunk....very zo...which was nice to see. she didn't talk much. just a lot of nodding of her head or looking to me to answer for her but there were so many people in and out of the ambulance and the ER room. who can blame her.
chris got to the hospital right after us. our friend chris drove him as he was not really coping well and couldn't drive himself. tori also came. she said this morning she was the "worry-iest" of the whole family. but she saw zo fall and zo was waving to her so i'm sure she felt some kind of unnecessary guilt. she and our friend chris waited in the lobby and zo sent her the stuffed fox on my suggestion. i didn't go out to see tori as my shirt had blood all over it and i didn't want to upset her anymore than she already was. we eventually sent her home with assurances that zo was fine to go to bed while we waited for test results.
so Dr. Proust came in and did a quick check. she seemed fine. of course the only thing she complained about was her elbow and the EMT's had put her IV on that arm along with the foam board and a lot of gauze....so he couldn't even look at her elbow. figures.
anyway, protocol dictated neck x-rays and a ct scan of her brain just in case. he didn't think it would show anything as she didn't exhibit any concussion symptoms, but we all wanted to be sure. having watched chris fall off a roof and fracture his skull, i knew that just because she seemed ok, didn't mean her neck was all right. learned that the hard way 6 weeks after chris was supposedly better.
so the x-ray techs came into her room and took pics of her neck from 3 angles. she even had to open her mouth (not an easy feat in a neck brace). the doctor came back and told us that it all looked great but he couldn't see c-7 (closest vertebrae to her shoulders) and that he wouldn't take off the brace until they did another x-ray. they took us to the x-ray lab this time. i held her shoulders down from the brace to get the picture and then we did more open mouth pics. her neck was immobilized at a bit of an angle so those were not clear pics the first time either. zo decided that she liked this room better than her ER room. maybe it was because of the low lights.
we were wheeled back to the room and then zo said she had to pee. well, this is a trick when you are strapped from head to toe to a back board. but the IV got to her and we had to figure out something. we decided to do the cat scan first as she said she could hold it. so we took another ride to the cat scan room and chris and i watched while she had brain pictures taken (which she thought was kind of cool). back to the room again (ER room 16) and now the pee problem was urgent. so they brought in a bed pan and we managed to get most of it in the pan. LOL
after that, we just waited. and waited. you know, the typical ER routine. there had been a care flight helicopter that came in while we were there. tori and our friend chris watched it land which was kind of neat for them, but care flight helicopters are never a welcome site (chris rode in one when he fractured his skull 15 years ago). that trauma pushed back the reading of our CT scan as is to be expected. i totally understand the "arms and legs" of the ER room. learned all about that when i was a kid, right dad?
meanwhile, aunt dianne showed up. chris and i had walked out of the house without cell phones. he probably would've forgotten his wallet with the insurance card if i hadn't reminded him to grab it when we went out the door. so dianne came to see how zo was. she had to know. and i totally get that. we've been through a lot together and i was really glad when she came. i knew we needed new clothes and she could report back to everyone else (by this point, most of the neighborhood knew plus all our friends who were at the party, etc.) so she headed back to the house to get zo's tinkerbell nightgown so we'd have something to take her home in. while there she was able to tuck tori in with a story while claire hung out at the house with the kids and milo. neither of the kids went to sleep until we got home from the hospital, but i appreciated all the effort nonetheless.
the PCT was sent in to clean her elbow up and that made her cry. but we got it all bandaged up and all that was left was her IV which she kept trying to look at. When Dr. Proust finally came back in, the CT scan was great and he told the nurse to remove her IV. that made her cry again, but she hung in there (as did mom and dad).
after all the tests, it was determined that zo fell 12 feet and all she had to show for it was a scraped elbow and a couple bruises (the sunburn she got earlier in the day....). we all marveled at her luck. i guess being only 39 lbs. helped in this case. that and the fact that she is "small and mighty".
i told
chris when we got home that i expected that zo would be in the ER again. she has a fearless bent to her personality and i just don't think this will be the last time. heaven help us.
i really think tori nailed it though....her angel sure did catch her and allow her to walk away from such a fall in such great condition. as of this morning, after sleeping for a LONG time, she is doing great. her elbow hurts a little but she isn't even sore. she's enjoying some tom & jerry cartoon's and cracklin' oat bran. it is all good.