We-Ew

So, congratulations to Wade and I: we made it through four and a half years of parenting (two years with two kids so lets say six and a half years to make me feel better,) without one single ride in an ambulance.
We had been to the ER a few times: once because I thought Aidan was having a severe allergic reaction to something which turned out to be heat rash (rookie mistake, we were young and dumb,) one trip for Owen and what seemed like dehydration (waiting 10 minutes I would’ve saved us a lot of money and found that I finally had a wet diaper to change,) and the rest belong to Wade. His ER trips have to do with him doing stupid stuff he shouldn’t have done in the first place ie: playing that second game, running into a fence with his hand, lifting too hard leaving his torn chest muscle to be mistaken as chest pains….you get the idea. This ER trip was a little different. Here’s the story….
To those of you who really know me, I am pretty uptight about letting the boys have a little freedom. This is not because I am holding on to having my little boys close to me forever, nope. That adage “give em an inch and they take a mile”, that is my boys. On the other hand, the crazy lady who always looks frazzled and has no control over her kids that always seem to be running around, screaming and breaking things—that’s me. I still have yet to figure out how to scare them about the street in front of the house, strangers, random dogs, all the things that you are supposed to be a little wary of. So due to their lack of understanding in those areas, we still use gates everywhere in the house, safety knobs on the doors, and even deadbolt the doors from the inside. Aidan has become an unstoppable force as he can get past all of those obstacles. He is even big enough to reach over the safety gate at the top of the stairs to let himself get downstairs for a late night snack. The kicker is that he knows that he isn’t supposed to do it so he’ll re-latch the gate behind him before he goes downstairs.
Anyway, we’ve had a lot of wonderful weather here lately. Good for drying out crops and good for park play-dates. Last Tuesday we were collectively getting ready to go to the park that’s a block from the house. Getting ready means that I am running around finishing up stuff and searching for shoes and socks while the boys attempt to kill each other by the door. This time I was finishing a casserole that we were gonna throw into the oven after the park for supper. I was at the foil point (casserole done, about to be covered, but the mess remains,) when Aidan came to me to ask if he could go outside. My answer was no, but Aidan decided otherwise. He took it upon himself to break out, and he took Owen with him. So, while I had noticed them doing this and I was trying to coax them back in, I knew they wouldn’t listen. I grabbed my phone and a bottle of water and was out the door seconds behind them. I got there a little too late, as the next thing I see is Owen crying with a skinned up face. Clearly he had fallen down the cement stairs outside the back door, and had landed on his head. Now, we do get a lot of head injuries between the two boys so I did know what I was supposed to be looking for concerning concussions. Since he was crying, had no change in his eyes and was acting normal (for him) initially I wasn’t concerned. Things went south pretty quickly after that. His crying got weird, and I couldn’t keep him awake. About this point I called the local ‘ask a nurse’ line, and was instructed to bring him straight to the hospital. The hard part was that I couldn’t let him fall asleep. Now, I am left with Owen (who I can’t let fall asleep,) Aidan who is worried about how much trouble he’s gonna get into when Dad gets home,) a broken van, and the closest hospital is fifteen minutes away. There was no way that we were gonna make it without someone passing out. So I called Wade, and told him he needed to come home, called a friend to take in the other escape artist while I had Owen in the ER and gathered up some PJ’s and diapers for Owen. Things went from bad to worse when Owen started throwing up. I can keep my cool through just about anything when it comes to the kids’ bodily functions: blood—no problem; wanna throw up while we’re shopping at target—go ahead (its happened twice.) This time it was different. I very much lost my cool, but luckily ‘ask a nurse’ does follow up calls and Wade drives pretty fast. At that moment, with Owen passed out on my shoulder with a pool of vomit between us, Wade got home and got Aidan from behind the couch. Ask-a-Nurse called back and when I told her that Owen was throwing up she immediately instructed me to call 911. Seconds go by before Wade has Aidan at Sayla’s house and we are waiting for the ambulance to show up….that took awhile. In that time, Owen seemed to almost completely recover and was thrilled to see not only a We-Ew (ambulance,) but a cop car as well greeting him outside the house. By the time we got to the hospital he was fine, but the doctor wanted a CT scan anyway (he explained to us that he didn’t like scanning little kids, but really wanted Owen to have one.) The scan was fine, but the doctor was certain that Owen did have a concussion. We were instructed to wake him up every couple of hours for the first night to make sure he was feeling fine. The first time we woke him up he seemed pretty out of it, but he’s not really one to wake up super happy. After that it was business as usual. We spent a lot of time making sure he didn’t run into things with his head (it is shocking how many times that kid runs into things.) Aidan spent a lot of time in time-out for hitting Owen because I can almost guarantee that the first thing a four year old is gonna do when you tell him NOT to hit his brother on the head—is hit his brother on the head. Owen even got a get well gift from Wade’s co-workers!
Owen is much better now. The cuts have almost completely healed and his head didn’t bruise that badly. Two days ago I found Owen hitting himself on the head with a golfball while laughing. I guess the only thing we can’t keep Owen from getting injured by is Owen. We’re looking into helmets….