CJ and the ER

Well CJ gave us quite a scare on March 8th.
My mom and I were at a bridal shower, Payton was playing legos in my parent's house, and CJ was outside by the ATV trailer. My dad walked away for like 20 seconds, and in that time, CJ managed to unhitch both latches, and pull the ramp down onto himself. Apparently he thought he was strong enough to hold it. He didn't realize it's at least 80lbs of metal.
It hit the top of his head, causing a gash, and then pushed him down, pinning him down with the base of the ramp on his head.

I figured it couldn't be good when my dad called and said we needed to come home. He can usually take care of things in the medical department. He said, he almost called 911, but then thought, "I kind of am 911" :)
He had him sitting up on the floor of the family room, with ice on the hemotoma at the base of his head/neck, some on his banged up knee, and another ice on the bleeding gash on his head.
I thought he'd just need stitches at urgent care, but my dad said we needed to go to a children's ER.

I ran home and got him some ibuprofen real quick so we could get some in him while we drove. CJ kept asking what happened, showing signs of a concussion.

My dad held him in the middle seat of the mini-van while I drove. He still has the hospital dispatch numbers in his phone, so he let Cardon Children's Hospital know that we were on our way. They tried to re-route us to either Phoenix Children's or Maricopa Medical, because they don't really like trauma cases, but we continued to Cardon's anyway.

Once we got there, they evaluated him, did some x-rays and a CT scan.

By the looks of the gash in his head, I thought that'd be the number one thing they'd take care of, but after a while of no one even glancing at it, I thought, "Maybe I should change what I need to be worried about..." Sure enough, they were concerned he had a possible skull fracture and brain bleed. (Plus apparently, you have like 12 hours to close the gash in his head, so it was fine.)

 

We sure were blessed that neither of those ended up being the case. It took a while to get the official results back on the tests, before they would let CJ take off his neck brace or eat/drink.

To pass the time he watched lots of cartoons, and we got a visit from Fonrey Godfrey who is in our ward, and is in charge of the nurses at the hospital. She brought CJ an awesome remote control tarantula, which he was super excited about.

 

(~As a side note: it was kinda crazy and brought back memories, because our recovery room was a couple doors down from the room where we went with Brooklyn's seizure the previous year.)

 

When the doctor finally came in, she wanted to admit CJ for observation, but wasn't sure her team would accept him (once again, because they don't really like to take on trauma cases, even though he was clearly in stable condition) so she wanted to transfer us to Phoenix Children's or Maricopa Medical. When my dad asked if we could observe him at home, she was first like, "absolutely no way." Then after checking him out and seeing how great he was doing, she totally flipped her opinion, and decided that sure, we could be discharged.

 

So after 5 hours at the ER, they came and put 6 staples in CJ's head, and we were free to go.

CJ was pretty sad they had to cut his shirt off.

He loved his tarantula, and he especially loved freaking his sister out with it. Like, she was truly terrified of it. After a month of us telling her that it wasn't real, and it wasn't going to get her, she finally believed us, and stopped being afraid of it.

 

It was pretty neat for CJ to see how much he was loved, because he had lots of visitors on Sunday afternoon/evening, and even Monday and Tuesday. These were some of the people who stopped by with kind words/treats:

Dan and Kenzie Brown-ring pops
Em, Beck, Rett-cards, cookies
Carson Gardner's Fam-goodies, card
Emma and Freeman's-cupcakes
Pete and Angela-ring pop
Alisa and Brycen Terry-powerade, popsicles (she heard that the next night both Payton and Brooklyn were throwing up)
Holly Decker-bee no bakes (so cute!)
Lia (again! a couple days later)-goodie bag with "inside, calm activities" like chalk, stickers, stamps, puzzle, candy, (and a cute baby girl outfit!)

 

So sweet!

 

 

Not quite the way I planned to kick off CJ's spring break, but oh well. The hard part was keeping him down, since I was now a little paranoid about his head injury. A day or two after he still wanted to ride bikes, run around, jump off the couch, play basketball (he always gets hit in the head with the ball it seems), go do monkey bars at the park, etc.

 

We're so thankful that he was protected and that it wasn't a lot worse, because it sure could've been.

We love you CJ!!