I'll Tumble For Ya

The things you never think will happen, inevitably do. Austin is rarely alone. It's a fact. He has nursing care 7 days a week, 12 hours a day. And when the nurses aren't watching him, I am or some other *authorized* adult. The main reason is because of his Trach, which he likes to tug on and remove. Nice trick, except it can kill ya! As fate would have it, this past week we have been without nursing care for a few days due to illness (her, not us). When we were on our mini staycation @ Disneyland it was not too big of a deal because there was lots of family around to pinch hit. So Day 1 back home, what happens?

Austin took a doozy of a fall. I have no clue how it happened. Even the *witnesses* are not quite sure as they were watching cartoons. So I guess they weren't so much witnesses, as *kids in the room*. Yup! I walked out of the room for a few minutes to get his feeding ready. When I left the room he was sitting on the couch with his 12yo cousin. Yes I know, my bad, not exactly an *authorized* caregiver, but a video was on and usually he remains glued to the TV too much to move. Well not so this time. He saw his opportunity to make a break for it and used his newly acquired PT skills to climb.

The theory is that he climbed up OVER the top of this chair,



dropped a block on the floor and then, like Jack, went tumbling after it. It ended with a thud, him sprawled on the floor behind the chair and lots of crying.

Where were those eyes on the back of my head when I needed them? Oh yeah and my X-ray vision?

At first glance it seemed like he was fine, aside from the screams, until I rubbed the back of his head. A Golf-sized bump was growing! Ice pack. More screaming. The crying lasted for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, I quickly called the Ped to see if we should go in. His Ped is on vacation, but the NP did an assessment over the phone. Did he lose consciousness.? No. Did he vomit? No. Did he try to fall asleep? No. Is there blood? No. So the final answer was apply ice, keep an eye on his drowsiness & yes, bring him in. I figured a bump was a good sign and the crying stopped; but you know with all that media attention to what happened to Natasha Richardson, I figured better safe than sorry in getting a medical assessment.

By the time we reached the doctor he was acting totally fine. The bump had grown and was now a lovely shade of green & purple. Gag. She said we could go to the ER and do a CT, but in her opinion those were done too often & unnecessarily. She showed me what to look for in his eyes and what to watch out for in the next 8-12 hours. I was nervous as heck going home and not going to the ER. Lord knows we go there enough, I felt she was right and we could avoid it. By the time he went to bed the bump had gone down, changed colors and just looked red & angry (probably at me.) There were droplets of crusty blood. As per the usual, I got up and checked him 10 million times that night, he slept fine for the most part. He woke @ 4am. Refused to go back to sleep. I brought him to bed with me and we slept until 6am when the reinforcements arrived.

It was bound to happen, right? Hey the good news is he can climb chairs. The bad news is he can now climb chairs!!!

48 hours later he is totally fine. He still has a small scab on his head,



but otherwise he seems none the worse for wear. Except he was up at 2am last night. Could a knock on the head reset your internal sleep clock? I hope not, I cannot get up early to watch cartoons at 2am again.


Thanks for peeking,