We were on our way out the door to go grocery shopping. I was grabbing some last minute things upstairs to throw in the diaper bag and Chris was bringing Frank out to the car. That's when I heard a loud "thump/crack" kind of noise. (Worst noise anyone could ever hear as a parent!!) I went to the top of the stairs and looked down and saw Chris picking Frank up, Frank was screaming and crying and Chris had a terrible twisted, scared look on his face. He told me they had gone down the stairs fine and they were both at the bottom landing. Chris opened the back door and turned around to open the storm door. Frank started to follow him and tripped and his head hit the front face of the door. It bruised a little and ballooned up almost instantly. It was really scary to see the knot on his forehead getting bigger as we watched it. We didn't know why it got so big that fast and were horrified so Chris brought him out to the car, I grabbed a bag of frozen blueberries to hold on his head, and we drove to the hospital.
He stopped crying almost as soon as we got in the car and was fine the whole way there. Except of course for me trying to hold the frozen blueberries to his head. (He didn't really like that too much.) Anyway we checked in at the desk at Hunterdon Medical Center's emergency room and he was good while we waited. By the time we were put in a room and seen by the staff the swelling had gone down by half- a HUGE relief for us. They asked a million questions: did he lose concousness? did he vomit at all? tell me again exactly what happened? can he walk? any change in behavior? has he been unusually sleepy? While we waited for the docotors to decide what should be done, if anything, we made him balloons out of the rubber gloves, built castles for him to knock over out of tissue boxes and plastic cups and the nurse brought him a special snack of graham crackers and apple juice. He waved to all the people that walked by the room and made friends with the janitor. Other than the giant lump on his forehead he was just his normal happy, flirty self.
The doctor's diagnosis was a closed head injury. Nothing needed to be done. He was lucky he fell from standing on a level surface with the door and not from the stairs or from running or something. He hit his forehead, which is the thickest bone in the skull. And he had no signs of a concussion. Normally they would have someone with this injury stay for 24 hours to be under surveilance, but since we know him best they told us it would be better if we took him home and just kept on eye on him for the next day or two. He got his stickers and we left. I have to say, the HMC ER was not as bad as I thought it would be. From the time he cracked his noggin to the time we walked out the door was only 2 hours.
We took him to KFC for lunch so he could have his favorite snack bowl: mashed potatoes, sweet corn and popcorn chicken with gravy and cheese. He fell asleep in the car on the way home and the rest of the day we just played in the living room and watched tv like we were supposed to.
Today he woke up fine and if he remembers anything from yesterday you'd never know it. He was such a good boy for all of it, now I just hope the lump goes away soon we just have all the beautiful colors to look foward to...
