Tuesday, May 19, 2009

The ER Queen

There is no shortage of fun and excitement around here and last night proved that.  Five minutes after arriving home from getting Romania at the bus stop, I was on the phone with my pediatrician wondering if I should take Egypt to the ER.  Holland and Egypt were playing outside and within minutes she was in the house screaming and blood dripping out of her mouth.  That's one thing you never want to see when your child is injured.  Holland helped piece together what happened:  the kids were playing with squirt guns and Egypt thought she was being chased.  She was pretending to be an elephant and was running with a plastic sword in her mouth.  She tripped and the sword jammed in her throat.  

So I told the boys to stay with the neighbor and then off we went to the ER.  I was just there a month ago with Romania for the dog bite incident.  The first doctor to see her said "I don't see anything" while looking in her mouth without a light.  Okay, even I know I wouldn't see anything like that.  Then a male nurse came in and said "looks okay to me".  Luckily, there was an ENT right next door at his office that they called over.  He looked her over very carefully and explained that although she hadn't punctured anything, the blunt trauma could be damaging.
She has pretty good bruising on both sides going down her throat.  He said she scraped it pretty good (hence the blood).  But there was something called Horner's Syndrome that could take up to three days to show up.  It is a nerve injury and I was given a whole list of things to watch for (drooping or sagging on one side of her face; one pupil constricted; clumsiness....)  I even had to wake her up last night to check her out.   She couldn't even eat last night.  She barely drank milk and even this morning was complaining that it hurt.  

Life is never dull.....

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