To the Hospital we will go....

Yesterday was a busy day for us.  We were taking care of my friend Angie's boys for the day so we had two extra monkeys added to the mix.  We were having a great time, and decided to go to the park for some fries.  After we were thoroughly saturated with grease and ketchup, we went to the playground so the kids could run around a bit.  I was with Marin on the play structure, when all of a sudden I heard the CRACK of a tree branch breaking, and then a thud.  The next sound I heard was Aidan moaning.

I took off running and found Aidan slowly getting up from the ground.  He was completely dazed and disoriented, and could barely walk straight.  Turns out the tree branch he was on (yes, he is a climber) broke and he fell.  I'm not sure how he fell, how far he fell (although I'm guessing it was about 4 or 5 feet) or what he landed on but he kept saying that his head really hurt. 

We packed all the kids in the van and drove home.  On the drive home Aidan kept dozing off despite our constant efforts to keep him awake.  Once inside all he wanted to do was to lie down and sleep.  He kept complaining about his head and kept saying: "I just want to go to sleep". 

By this point both Chris and I were pretty sure that he had a concussion. After consulting with our medical expert Google, we were 99% certain that this was the case.  A concussion is a pretty bloody terrifying thing when you're a parent.  It's that whole "rattling your brain" thing that freaked me out.

We fed the kids dinner (which Aidan didn't touch) and then tried to entertain him by playing some Nintendo (again - he wouldn't even play that so we knew that something was DEFINITELY wrong!).

Then he threw up.  You have to understand a thing or two about Aidan - he is a really tough kid. He never complains about being tired or hurt.  And he is NOT a puker.  So put together the fatigue, lethargy and throwing up and you have some pretty bizarre behaviour.

I decided to take him to Emerg just to be sure, and sure enough the Dr. said:  "yep, looks like a classic concussion to me."

 Out of that visit to the ER I learned a few things:
1)  Apparently it's OK to let someone fall asleep when you have a concussion.  It's a common response to head trauma.
2)  You don't need to wake them up every four hours to check on them.  As the Dr. said to me:  "well, if you wake him up, are you going to be able to tell if he is coherant?"  To which I responded: "Are you kidding, Aidan is the heaviest sleeper on the planet!".

But, because I'm anal retentive, I made him sleep next to me last night because I was so worried. Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep because every time he moved I was up like a shot checking on him.

The long and short of it is that he woke up this morning and was back to his normal energetic self.  Although, he was rather annoyed that I wouldn't let him do any dives at the pool today.  I'm such a mean Mom!!