Peter Pan Tried Flying

Ugh, this kid will be the death of me. Or the death of himself.

Apparently after being Peter Pan for Halloween, Teddy thought he should try flying in real life. He fell over the railing from the second floor or possibly the top of the stairs. He landed with a thud (that's obvious, right?), stunned for about 30 seconds and then started crying without moving. Talk about heart-stopping moments.

Yet within 5 minutes, he was done crying and moving apparently normally. That didn't change the fact that we determined it was best to take him in to get evaluated given his incredibly high pain tolerance and lack of communication. He was excited to go for a car ride with both mom and his babysitter in the middle of the day. He was still excited when we went into the hospital. 

I'll be honest I felt a bit ridiculous telling the receptionist that he fell over the railing for two reasons: the fact that he fell over a railing itself and the fact that he was giggling and appeared perfectly fine. 

(Sidenote: the ER won't tell you whether you should go to urgent care or be seen at the ER. However, urgent care will always take you down the secret passages to the ER when they determine you really needed ER services. When in doubt and not clearly a life-threatening situation, we should always try urgent care first. Of course, this was my third trip down that secret passage ...)

As soon as we went back into the ER, though, Teddy's demeanor changed. And the moment I tried to push his chair into the ER treatment room, he instantly began crying and actively resisting going into the room. We were quite the spectacle with a whole ER team ready to evaluate and treat Teddy, asking me what they can do to help. My response? "The only way he's going in that room is if we force him."

You see, that was the same room where he was intubated. Even though we thought he was out of it, he clearly has traumatic memories. I did manage to get his chair into the room and honestly don't remember whether I had to pull him from him chair or managed to get his chair into the room. (Let's just say we both have some traumatic memories from there.)

They quickly permitted me to have another caregiver present, so we got an extra set of helping hands. And we needed them and then some. I tell you, it was much easier to wrangle Teddy when he was smaller. I'm still larger than him, but he's on path to outgrow me much quicker than I can handle. I'm less concerned about him growing up than I am about not being able to restrain him for medical procedures and wrangle him as needed to get through days like this. 

They decided on a chest x-ray but needed no further tests thankfully. It was challenging enough to get that one done even though it takes about a minute and is completely painless. From the moment Teddy went into the treatment room, he was crying non-stop. At one point, I was concerned he was going to throw up because he was crying to hard ... which would have then indicated a possible concussion when in reality he just hated being there. 

Our nurse was able to get us to a private waiting room with a couple couches, chairs and kid table and chairs. It still took about 15 minutes, but he finally settled down and stopped crying. We rearranged all the furniture repeatedly, sat in everything, ate a snack and enjoyed apple juice. We waited there until they cleared Teddy to be released.

We took off his mask when he was alone in the room and crying ... poor kid.

Although Teddy was unfazed once we left, I know how challenging those visits are physically and emotionally on all of us. I wish that our childcare provider didn't have to endure the hour of crying and the feeling of helplessness when nothing calms Teddy. But I absolutely appreciated her help and calm demeanor as she bear hugged Teddy to get him out of his chair into my lap for the chest x-ray and helped redress him after he had an accident (while I was holding him, of course) and kept Dave updated. 

And in related news, we have renewed our efforts to safety plan the railing. Teddy clearly didn't learn any lessons as he was trying to climb the outside of the stairs the next day ...