A Traumatic Tuesday

While Owen was taking his morning stroll across the counters after breakfast Tuesday morning, he lost his footing and fell to the tile below...directly on his head. Just thinking about it still turns my stomach. For anyone who is not familiar with O (like the Dr. who asked me if I "put him up there") I've never "put" him on the counter, he is a super climber and climbs everything. His most favorite place to climb is onto the counters. I spend the better part of my days repeatedly retrieving him off the counters. While I don't condone such risky behavior, I'm not exactly sure how to stop it. He has been climbing up there for some time now. When he first started, I moved all the bar stools out of the house, and had about a week of relief before he figured out how to climb up onto the counter from the chairs. Since I have not been sucessful at stopping him, I do my best to do damage control by never leaving knives out on the counter and trying to keep the counters cleared off and dry. My cooktop looks like this....no knobs.
I keep all the knobs in the cupboard because one day he climbed up and turned on the gas! While I had high hopes that this head trauma had cured him of his climbing obsession, no such luck, I have retrieved him down three times already this morning.

The Long Story... (for family and anyone else patient enough to read)
So, yesterday morning, he fell off the counter onto his head. I immediately called Chris (he's better at handling emergency situations, I tend to be over-emotional...between Owen and I, I'm not sure who cried more yesterday) and he came home from work. He checked for the symptoms of a concussion and I called the hospital for instructions from the nurse. Owen really wanted to go to sleep, but Chris took him for a walk outside to visit the horse so he would stay awake. After about 45 minutes, we felt like he was going to be ok and decided to just watch him closely. Chris went back to work and I held Owen while he took a short 15 minute catnap (the nurse said he could go to sleep, but I needed to wake him every 20 minutes). He woke on his own and I was really hopeful that he was doing better, but then, he started to vomit. I called the clinic back and asked if they could see him, or if I needed to take him to the ER. They said they had just had a no-show and to come right away. We hurried over and while we were at the clinic, Owen, of course, acted like there was nothing wrong, he climbed the chairs, played with the toys and dug in the trash. The doctor said he definitely had a concussion, but felt like he would be ok. He said he didn't want to give him a CT scan unless he really needed to because it would be so much radiation for his little system. He also said it isn't uncommon for someone with a concussion to vomit once, but if he continued to vomit after we got home or if he began exhibiting any of the symptoms on the list he gave me (uneven pupils, fever, lack of coordination) to bring him back in.
So, off we went, headed for home. Once we were home, he began acting listless again and started vomiting more. I called the clinic back and talked to the nurse who said the next step was a CT scan. She warned me that I couldn't be in the room with him and they would most likely have to IV sedate him so he would be still enough for the procedure. I told her I needed think about it and talk to Chris. By the time I got off the phone with her, Owen was soooo tired. It was his nap time and I felt like he really needed to rest. After his nap and a blessing (thanks again Dan, we are thinking of getting you a noble steed and shiny armor since you seem to have a way of showing up and saving the day;) he was doing much better and I didn't feel like a CTscan was necessary. By dinner time, we were happy to see that he was back to himself and busy driving his sisters crazy.
We are so thankful that the worst seems to be over and that we have our spunky baby boy back. Today he has one of the worst black eyes I have ever seen (I actually haven't seen many, but it's pretty bad) along with a good sized goose egg on his forehead. I am certain he will only look worse in the coming days as his eye takes on more color from the bruising. He didn't actually hit his eye, but his head is draining into it.
And we will no doubt be hibernating for a while to avoid any onlooker's hasty calls to family services. And by the way, yes, I did hear about Natasha Richardson....from at least a half dozen people yesterday...not helpful, mind you, given my vivid imagination and tendency toward catastrophizing.

His daddy calls him "bruiser."

Still so cute even with a cheek full of pretzels and a black eye.

Poor sweet baby.