I would like to start this post by saying that Afton is perfectly fine and healthy. She just gave us a good scare at the end of the year to make sure we got every penny's worth of our health insurance.
Back in December, the Saturday before New Years Eve, Afton fell backwards off a step and hit her head on some tile. She fussed for a little and then seemed to calm down, enjoy her dinner, and went to bed just fine. Signs for a concussion were watched for very carefully, but there weren't any!
Sunday morning, we got up and went to church. Afton was a little cranky, but nothing unusual for a Sunday with nap schedules being thrown off. She really was acting pretty normal.
That afternoon I was checking again for signs of head trauma to watch for and I read that if there is a soft spot on the side of the head to go to the doctor ASAP. I had felt a soft spot that morning and checked again upon reading this, so into the Urgent Care we went.
The Urgent Care told us that we should go get an MRI done "to be on the safe side." So we drove to an awesome pediatric ER to get an MRI done. Afton was doing great. She flirted with the doctors and nurses, showing them her cute smile.
The MRI was done and the doctors said they were suprised that she had a skull fracture and a small bleed. Wait, what?! I was a little worried prior to this, but at this point I broke down for a little bit.
We then were transfered to another hospital that had a neurosurgeon on call to check things out. So Afton had her first (and hopefully only) ambulance ride. She was true to her stinker-self in the ambulance, trying to pull of the monitor the EMT placed on her. The EMT then challenged her to "try to take it off now." Which she did, and then grinned at him when she failed.
We then got to the other ER, which was not as cute and baby friendly, but the staff was very sweet to Afton. We had a friend who lived close to this hospital meet us at the ER so we could give Afton a blessing. I am so grateful for the
priesthood.
The neuro team came and attributed her normal behavior to the fact that her [normal to infants] soft spot was not completely closed yet. So that allowed more room for any added pressure from her injury. They said that as long as Afton continued to behave normally, the injury could heal on it's own and the extra fluid would dissipate on its own.
We had to stay one night in the PICU (I think mostly for protocol). The nurses there were wonderful. They came in to check Afton's vitals EVERY hour. The nurses tried to get the doctors to stretch it to 2-3 hours, but got turned down. It was a long night, but Afton slept surprisingly well.
The next day we met with Neuro once again, the pediatrician, and an eye specialist. All told us that she was good to go home. The next three hours were spent in the playroom while we waited for the discharge papers to be put through and then we went on home to spend our New Years Eve catching some much needed zzzz's.
So pretty much we went through this whole adventure to be told that Afton would be fine. Which we are VERY grateful for.
The silver lining to all of this was that it all happened before the New Year, and because this was in the same year as Afton's birth, we met our total out of pocket expenses and only had to pay a couple hundred dollars instead of a couple thousand. WOOHOO!
And if you read all of this you get rewarded with pictures!
Sooo super blurry, but look at how happy she is!
Taking a much needed snooze
This is to show the goose-egg that appeared 2 days after we left the hospital. No worries, her head is no longer lop-sided. :)
