First trip to the ER - Times TWO!

Brody needs a helmet....simple as that.

In the past three weeks, we have made 2 trips to the emergency room for head injuries. As a parent, you just feel terrible watching your little one suffer, scream, cry, kick, pout after they do something you wish was more preventable. Even though Brody is pretty steady on his feet, he still has a tendency to run with his head down and by the time he lifts his head up, OUCH...too late!

TRIP ONE: One Friday afternoon, we had enjoyed a nice day with daddy at the Children's Museum and an early dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. We had just gotten home from dinner, walked into the kitchen, and BAM! Brody's forehead and the corner edge of our kitchen island had a nice meeting. I kid you not, I have never seen something swell up so quickly! Before we knew it, there was a nice goose egg growing on the side of Brody's forehead, complete with a nice bruise. We debated for a few seconds whether or not we should go to the hospital and when the swelling got worse, we got back into the car and headed to the ER. By this time, Brody had relaxed and was chilling in his car seat sipping on some water. I'm nervously sitting in the passenger seat turning around every 30 seconds or so to make sure Brody's still awake and hasn't passed out or anything. He's smiling away...with a HUGE goose egg on his forehead.

With this first visit to the ER, it was pretty obvious to the triage nurse why we were they. After some quick paperwork, we were back in a consult room where the ER doc came in, looked Brody over, and then proceeded to tell us some story about a boxer named Bruiser Brody (or something like that). The doc said Brody looked fine and jokingly told us to "get out of here."

Time spent in the ER for first visit: 30 minutes.

Hospital Bill for that visit: and arm and a leg.

If you look closely above Brody's left eyebrow
(your right when looking at this photo),
you can see the remnants of a 2-day old
goose egg and vertical bruise.

Within about a week, that bruise was gone. Just in time for everything to happen all over again!

TRIP TWO: We drove up to visit some dear friends and to meet their 6-week old son. They cooked us a yummy brunch and we were hanging out after brunch, just talking while Brody was bust chasing their puppy dog around. Brody climbed up into my lap, and while Mike is re-telling our ER story and commenting on how we should really get Brody a helmet, about 10 seconds later, Brody slips from my lap and goes forehead first into the edge of a glass coffee table!!! Mike and I are surprisingly calm having just experienced this about a week ago. Our poor friends are scrambling around to make an ice pack for Brody (we now know that Brody HATES ice packs...as most kids do), and by the time we calm Brody down, the swelling has increased and now there is BLOOD!!! That's right, not only did he hit his forehead in the EXACT SAME spot as the week before, he now had a horizontal cut on his forehead. Lovely! Again, we debated on whether or not to go to the ER, and finally we hopped into the car, got on the freeway and headed to a different hospital on our way home (heck, if we keep this up, we might hit all of the Bay Area hospitals...let's hope not!).

At this hospital, we had to go through a metal detector (yep!), and had to answer a zillion questions about whether we had traveled to Mexico, had been near any livestock, pigs, etc. We certainly didn't enter the hospital with swine flu, but I swore it felt like we were going to leave that place having picked it up! We spent TWO AND A HALF HOURS there!!! TWO AND A HALF HOURS for a resident physician to tell us Brody didn't need stitches and would be fine. Then the attending physican to tell us the same thing. Then the nurse wouldn't let us leave until another nurse came and cleaned up Brody's head (yep, good old soap and water and some neosporin). Brody was content for the most part, but after not being able to eat lunch and missing his nap, he passed out the minute we put him in his carseat and headed home.

Time spent in the ER for second visit: See paragraph above.

Hospital bill for that visit: We haven't received the bill yet, but I'm guessing it will be an arm and a leg times 5 since we were there 5 times longer. (Perhaps a little extra for the soap, water, and neosporin.)

Mom...what are you doing to me?
Brody's latest Boo Boo...no stictches required!

Hopefully, we won't need to go to the ER again for a loooooong time!