3 Stitches

When Brooke woke from her nap yesterday, it was time for Jack and Claire and their two friends, John and Amelia to clean-up and then I was going to drive John and Amelia to their homes. We were about two minutes into clean-up time in the upstairs hall when an accident happened.

I was right there (within an arm's reach of Brooke) but I saw nothing. In fact, I can guess that I was only looking away from Brooke for a second or two at the most. Then I heard the bang of something into the wall. When I looked I saw a blur go into Claire's room and Brooke was looking at me in pain but not yet screaming. I could only guess that the large sound I heard was Brooke's head hitting the wall -- it was horrific to think about her head making that sound! Within a second she was screaming. I picked her up and saw a bruise quickly forming on her forehead. When I looked again, it was gushing blood. Jack started yelling, "I saw you push her! I saw you push her!" to Claire and Claire was shouting, "I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to!" At that point, I did not have time to investigate what had happened.

Brooke probably screamed for a solid 4-5 minutes and the whole time I kept trying to see the wound through all of the blood. Thankfully it started to slow down and I could see that it was not deep but rather wide -- what you think of when you hear that someone "busted their head open".

We got her to Physician's Immediate Care where they gave her 3 stitches -- which was not pleasant, to say the least. I don't care what they say, she was not numb. She could not see what they were doing but she started screaming and crying every time they stuck the needle in her forehead. I am not sure I could have handled more than three stitches with her so obviously being able to feel everything that they were doing to her.

They told me to watch her for signs of concussion -- but I was not really worried about that at the time. Later when we got home, I heard Jack upstairs having Claire re-inact the accident. He was just like a real investigator -- stopping her and clarifying and finally having her show him exactly what happened. Then he called me upstairs so that they could show me.

Evidently, Claire had been standing on a stool that was upside down. She was balancing on its sides and then fell (or jumped) off but lost her balance and basically landed with her full body weight, and whatever speed she was traveling at, right on top of Brooke, thrusting Brooke forward and causing her to crash with alot of force into the corner of the wall. When they re-enacted it, I felt queasy because Brooke is so tiny and is so floppy anyway because of her hypotonia; she might as well have been thrown into the wall. I will definitely be watching her for signs of a head injury. I am praising God, though, because although she is hurting (she says "hurwt" [hurt] and "oach" [ouch]), so far she seems fine. (Again, I am having problems uploading her picture but I will keep trying)

Thank you Jennifer and Mitzi for taking Jack and Claire off of my hands while I was getting Brooke stitched up!