I am soooooo gonna have a glass of wine RIGHT NOW!

[Guest guest]

Allow me to share what a stressful day it has been! This

morning we were going to go look at mattresses because we have been

sleeping on an airbed since we moved to a new house. It's great for a

couple days, but not for long term. Anyway, Phoebe had followed her

brother down to the basement (aka the 'boy-cave'), and I was chasing

them down to get dressed do hair etc., so we could get going.

As I was heading down to the basement steps to get Phoebe, she started

crawling up the stairs. The steep basement stairs scare me, but she's

been so good about crawling up on all fours or sliding down on her

butt. Regardless, I try not to let her do it on her own, unless she

sneaks through an open door that her brother left for her. The door

has the special knob handles and a little slide lock, but if it is left

open, those don't help.

As Phoebe reached the upper steps crawling on all fours toward me, I

bent down & reached my hands out to pick her up. To my surprise

she decided to stand straight up on the top steps from all fours. At

that point it happened heart stoppingly and painfully in slow motion.

Phoebe stood up wobbly to gain her balance as I reached for her, but

then immediately toppled backwards just inches out of my

reach and rolled down the entire flight of stairs. Thank God when we

moved here I had put a crib mattress on the bottom floor of the steps

just because I was paranoid of anyone slipping on the

steps that are much steeper than regular stairs. However, Phoebe did

several tumble rolls backwards down the steep steps only to hit the

back of her head on the corner of the door frame before

landing on the mattress. The door frame broke the fall.

That sound is the worst sound in the world for any parent. The head

crack right before the screaming starts. I was already in motion

flying down the stairs trying to catch her as she fell, but gravity

beat me to it.

I immediately scooped her up with horrible visions of broken necks,

paralyzed body, cranial bleeds, tracheostomys, ventilators, brain

damage and neurosurgery dancing through my head. It really sucks to be

a nurse sometimes.

As she wailed, all I could do is fall to my knees and cradle her in my

arms praying out loud that there were no serious injuries. Phoebe's

screaming cry at least told me she was still conscious and her arms and

legs were moving so I ruled out a fractured spine at that point. I

carried her up the stairs and got the ice pack still praying that her

injuries were minimal. When I saw blood, I got scared again, but upon

further inspection there was only a small laceration on her scalp that

was not even deep enough to split open. It looked like a deep scratch,

but it did bleed.

At this point Phoebe is pretty pissed at me for trying to inspect the

injury and is fighting me to get away. I managed to get the ice pack

on for about thirty seconds and could blot the oozing a bit. I had

bought some hydrogen peroxide in a spray bottle and I recommend that

trick for everyone! You can spray that on a moving target from at

least a foot away!

So the next couple of hours I was still pretty stressed checking her

pupils for dilation and making sure there was no deep brain injury.

Did yall know that the almond shape of our kids eyes make it hard to

asses the pupils with a flash light? Especially when the kiddo does

not want you to look in their eyes?

I do NOW!

So while mommy freaked out for a couple of hours, Phoebe played and

relished in the attention as if nothing had happened. In fact, she

stood on the edge of the couch a couple of times as if she was going to

attempt another swan dive and just laughed mockingly at me as I had a

coronary running over to sit her back down. She just got mad a couple

times when I tried to check her head to see if stitches were needed,

but after awhile the bleeding stopped and a nice scab started forming.

After slathering a big goop of bacitracin ointment all in her hair, and

doing my final neurological checks along with a couple flash cards to

make sure the cognitive development was not affected, I am going to

attempt to relieve my stress with a very tall glass of

red wine... Maybe two.

:-\ :-[ :-[ :-\

--

Dink-Bork

Phoebe 5 Our lively sparkle girl Ds & Cf

Nolan 7 Our loving smart all boy child

"Truth alone will endure; all the rest will be swept away before the

tide of time....What may appear as truth to one person will often

appear as untruth to another person. But that need not worry the

seeker. Truth and untruth often co-exist; good and evil often are found

together. Use truth as your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer and

anything that does not stand the test when it is brought to the anvil

of truth and hammered with nonviolence, reject it" ~Gandhi