Hailey trip #2 to PCMC

Well, it has become apparent that Hailey takes after her father and will probably turn me gray before I'm 30! He's broken more bones than he can remember and has had several hospital visits. I, on the other hand, never have had a broken bone or been in the hospital for anything except giving birth. So now with 2 visits to the ER in about a year and a half with Hailey it is obvious she is like her father. Luckily, so far, without serious injury. You may remember a year ago this past November Hailey pulled a dresser on top of herself (still a mystery to how that even happened) and with subsequent events led me to all 911 and we took an ambulance ride to Primary Children's Medical Center. Probably the scariest moments of my life. I feel very blest that Hailey came away from that with practically no injuries. In fact it's almost unbelievable how great she came out of it all. It was a stressful day and I hoped it would be our last scare like that. But as Eric pointed out to me, "these things happen with kids." Man, I hate it when he's right. Late Friday afternoon Micah and Hailey were playing downstairs when I heard Hailey start to cry and both of them came upstairs to find me. Hailey crying is not an uncommon occurrence and happens frequently...daily so I wasn't too concerned. Micah told me she fell down the stairs. Also something I wasn't concerned about. We have a lot of stairs in this house and even Eric and I have slipped down them a time or two. Hailey told me she bumped her back and her nose but didn't seem overly hurt or injured. To calm her down I put on Toy Story 3 (her current favorite) and went to feed Olivia. I came to check on them a little while later and Hailey had fallen asleep on the couch. I know for most toddlers that may not be weird but for Hailey that was extremely strange. She has NEVER just randomly fallen asleep somewhere. Since giving up naps she has occasionally fallen asleep in the car if we've been driving for a longer time but that is it. I still just shrugged and figured she'd just worn herself out crying and could use the rest so I let her be. An hour or two later when she woke up she came upstairs to find me. She was crying and inconsolable. She only wanted to be held and was very lethargic and spacey. She moaned and whined and I couldn't put her down. Luckily, Eric came home soon after and took her so I could finish cooking dinner. All through dinner she sat on Eric's lap and refused to eat or drink anything. I even offered her some of my diet coke and she denied it...that's when I knew something was really wrong! (She calls all soda pop diet coke and LOVES it all!) Eric noticed a bump on the back of her and started to worry that something really might be wrong. My fabulous pediatricians office has an after hours clinic and nurses you can talk to so I called them to ask what sorts of things I could be looking for and if she possibly could have a concussion. It took close to 45 minutes before I was able to talk to a nurse and in that time Hailey continued to get worse. Nodding off in Eric's lap and even more irritable. By the time I got off the phone with the nurse she had advised me to take Hailey to the hospital. I know that without seeing a patient they can be overly cautious so Eric and I were skeptical and I really was just waiting for Hailey to jump up and be running around any minute. So before jumping in the car we decided to make one last call to our last bishop who is a pediatrician. Eric and I both know him well and respect him so I knew I could trust his opinion. Almost before I could finish explaining to him the situation he told me to immediately go to Primary Children's Hospital. That was enough to finally send me into a panic. It is a good thing I married someone with such a calm personality because he was able to slow me down as I was running around trying to figure out what to do with Micah and Olivia. A few minutes and a few phone calls later my parents were on their way down so they could spend the night if needed, we dropped the other 2 kids off at a wonderful friend and neighbors house and we were on our way. Everything moved fairly quickly and smoothly once we got to the ER. I guess with a head injury that helps put you first in line! After the doctor examined her she felt like it wasn't quite necessary to do a CT. She physical exam seemed ok and she just suggested we give her a drink or something sweet and see if she perked up a little before we left the hospital. Eric and I felt good about that decision and not exposing her to any radiation that was unneeded. As we waited for the nurse to bring her a slushy (per Hailey's request) I was reading her books and singing her songs. This was the long part of the wait. I stood up to get another book and suddenly Hailey threw up EVERYWHERE. She hadn't eaten since that afternoon so I was surprised. Eric ran to get a nurse and soon after the doctor came back and said she now felt it necessary to order a CT. The machine for head CT was pretty slick and they let us stay in there with her to help keep her calm which was nice. The whole thing was over in just a few minutes. When they told us they needed to find the radiologist to look at her scans I figured we'd be there all night but still it was pretty fast. Hailey's doctor came back and revealed the news that her scans were clear and so it was most likely just a mild concussion. And with a concussion we should expect her to throw up again (lovely) and she told us what to watch for. Hailey finally got her slushy and the nurse came to discharge us! At this point it was almost 11 pm so she laid back down on my shoulder. As the nurse was going over everything Eric started eating the rest of the slushy. At that point Hailey suddenly yelled, "Dad don't eat all my slushy!!!" Our Hailey girl was back! It was amazing over the next few minutes how she perked up, very nice to see. I thought we might have a long night ahead of us but besides one more throw up episode and then she woke up at 5:00 am with a hard time going back down it was a relatively calm night. We've now had two close calls with her and feel extremely grateful things haven't been worse. I was also extremely grateful to know that we had so much family near by to help out if we had needed it. We are grateful our sweet girl is alright!