Yesterday we went again to Planet Kids for an afternoon of play. Everything started out fine. We met some friends and got the little kids playing in the ball pit. Amelia went off to climb. After about 20 minutes, I could hearAmelia crying, making her way down to me. She had a huge knot right above her left eyebrow, and it was growing by the minute. It was so big, and I couldn't get out of her exactly what happened (other than "I fell"), we got ready to make a beeline to the hospital. One of my friends was going to meet us at the ER to watch Jack (TJ was in Germany and so couldn't help).
We got to the ER, got registered and got in to see a doctor pretty quickly. After a bunch of questions (try trying to find out if a 3 1/2-year-old lost consciousness by asking her). I felt terrible that I didn't see what happened, so I was trying to ask her medical questions in 3 1/2-year-old lingo ("Did you fall asleep for a minute after you fell?") They had her touch her nose, stand on one foot, and all that good stuff. Amelia had fun jumping up and down and acting silly.
They basically told me that they didn't think she had a skull fracture, and that we should just keep an eye on her for the next few hours to make sure she was OK. That involved trying to wake her up last night. That part didn't go well -- she mostly just tried to shoo us away whenever we tried to wake her up. So we decided she was probably OK.
She woke up her usual bounch self this morning. And just as the doctor had told us, the blood blister (or hematoma, as they kept calling it), had migrated down to right above her eye. It looks terrible.
I felt her head this morning, and I felt an indentation in her head where she had hit, and immediately panicked. Even though she was feeling fine, I was worried that she really had fractured her skull and needed to be seen. So I called TJ, and he came home from work to take us BACK to the ER. They reexamined her and while they agreed that she could potentially have a fracture, there's no real course of treatment for a fracture. I was worried about it being a serious depression, but the doctor didn't seem to think it was. They were willing to do a skull x-ray if I really wanted, but they said there wasn't much of a benefit to it. So off we went again, and she's been fine all day.
I'm totally paranoid about it, but I feel better to have gotten two opinions and to have a bouncy girl. I hope it heals quickly.
On the plus side, we learned all about the ER and how to navigate that. We had to pay "full price" since we don't have national health care -- but it was only 50. So it was well worth the 100 euros to get some peace of mind. The whole process was quick and easy and relatively painless. I was eternally grateful to have Tara there to watch Jack and let me concentrate on Amelia. It's nice to have made a good friend so quickly. It would've been a much rougher afternoon without her...
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