Trauma, Trauma, Trauma!!!

So this morning was a normal morning....we ate breakfast, got dressed and then went outside. While I was picking up the toys the kids were playing in the yard. Then the day took a turn for the worse....I'm not even sure what I heard or if I just saw her, but the next thing I knew I was dropping everything in my hands and running over to pick Ella up off the ground. She had fallen 4ft from the top of the kids slide down onto the sidewalk/curb that is by our front porch. If you look at this picture on the right side you can see the slide in the background and the curb in front of it. Her body fell over the side rail of the slide and was wedged between the slide and the curb. Scary!

When I got to her I was sure she was either going to scalped or bleeding profusely. I picked her up and was expecting tons of blood, but there wasn't any. There was a GIANT goose egg and lots of scratches though. It took a long time to calm her down and then after checking her out it became apparent that I needed to take her to the ER. Her forehead was SO swollen it looked like she had a dent on the side of her head and her eye was almost swollen shut. I call my friend Kim and she came over to watch the kids and then we went to St. Francis. I swear they are going to know me by first name soon! If you haven't been able to keep track this is the 5th time I've been to the St. Francis ER this year. Heaven help us!

This picture doesn't really show how bad it is...the goose egg was so big!

When we got to the ER one of the trauma nurses was coming out to get another patient and then she overheard me telling them what happened to Ella and she decided to take her right in. Since she fell from a height that was twice her size she fit into the trauma spectrum of things. So we went right back and they decided pretty quickly to do a CT Scan. They knew they would need to sedate her since she would have to hold completely still. I told them about her pass experience with Ketamine and how I would like to avoid that again. The nurses, doctors and pharmacists consulted and decided to just use Propanol instead and it worked great. She wasn't even out of it really. It only made her still for about 2 minutes and then she was back, but that's all they needed.

The CT Scan came back and showed that she did indeed fracture her skull, but thankfully it's not caved in and will heal on it's own. It also showed something else that is a little concerning....Ella has fluid in her brain. We all have fluid in our brain, but she has extra fluid. The doctor at St. Francis consulted with a Neurosurgeon over at Mary Bridge and he is sure that this fluid was not caused from the fall, but has been there for a while. She does have a pretty big head for her age...in fact at 12 months old her head was measuring the size of a normal 20 month old. The Neurosurgeon wants to see her this Friday to get to the bottom of the fluid issue. This could mean a lot of things or nothing at all. If she's had it her whole life it could be that she just has extra fluid and it's nothing or it could be dangerous and she might have to have a shunt put in at the base of her skull to help drain it. Today has been a bit unsettling to say the least!

Thankfully we are home and Ella was walking around being her crazy fearless self immediately! We are on orders to wake her up every 3 hours tonight and we are prepared for her to look worse tomorrow morning.