The worst injury Elise ever had happened a few months ago when she was walking around outside and randomly tripped on the sidewalk. She began crying, and I picked her up and started my “you’re fine, it’s ok” mantra, lazily checking her knees and hands for (the inevitable) scrapes to add to all the others (She does not pay a lot of attention to what she is doing so she falls and trips and runs into things often. She always has a bump, bruise or scrape of some sort). But when she turned her face to me, I noticed that blood was actually dripping out of the sides of her mouth. It was terrifying. Blood was everywhere. We scrambled in the house and began poking around to try to figure out what exactly was bleeding. When we couldn’t figure out the root of it (or get it to stop), we dragged our neighbor, who is a Nurse Practitioner, over to inspect it and make sure that Ellie was not going to bleed to death.Elise playing the piano with her second cousin, Cassin, 8.
Turned out that she must have bitten her tongue far back in her mouth when she fell – perhaps she’d been feeling her new tooth with her tongue when she tripped – and as I have mentioned before, the girl is a Bleeder. She had blood oozing out of her month for a good half hour before it finally let up. Our neighbor assured us that she was not in danger of bleeding to death. But it really was quite a scare. There's nothing like thick red blood pouring from your child’s mouth to freak a parent out.
Last weekend, though, we added another traumatic injury to her short list. She was coming down a slide at the playground when she accidentally turned her body so that her hip and foot got caught diagonally across the slide. This caused her to come to a screeching halt on the slide and to wail in pain. I picked her up, realizing it must have hurt, and coddled her for a few minutes trying to calm her down. When the crying nearly subsided, I tried to encourage her to get back on the jungle gym. I put her down, and she took one step and her leg completely gave out on her. She wailed. We went through the process again, and when she’d calmed down, I set her back down. But she could not put any pressure on her leg without crumbling over. Every time she tried to put her foot down, she cried “OOOOOwwwwwwieeee!”
Elise giving hugs to Shoshana's daughter, Lauren, 8 months
Of course, being the Worrier that I am, I freaked out and announced that we needed to go to the hospital immediately. This did not seem like a rash decision to me, as my 16 month old baby couldn’t put any pressure on her leg. But both Marty and my friend Christy basically told me I needed to relax and give it more than 30 seconds before running to the ER. She probably just twisted something. So I plopped her down and began frantically inspecting her ankle, knee and hip, looking for bruising or swelling. There was none. This was, of course, a good sign, but she still couldn’t put pressure on her leg so I continued to panic.
We drove back to Christy’s house, hoping that some time off of her leg would help it a little and that everything would be better by the time we got home. It wasn’t. At first, things were just as bad as they were at the playground, but after a little while she was standing and squatting without a problem, though she still couldn’t walk. A while later, she began walking a little, but couldn’t run without her leg giving out on her and crying “owie.” By the next day, she was running around like a maniac again without any problems at all. We never really did figure out what exactly happened. It was hard to tell if it was her hip, knee, foot, back or entire left side of her body that was actually injured, but Marty seems to think that she hyper-extended her knee.
Turned out that she must have bitten her tongue far back in her mouth when she fell – perhaps she’d been feeling her new tooth with her tongue when she tripped – and as I have mentioned before, the girl is a Bleeder. She had blood oozing out of her month for a good half hour before it finally let up. Our neighbor assured us that she was not in danger of bleeding to death. But it really was quite a scare. There's nothing like thick red blood pouring from your child’s mouth to freak a parent out.
Last weekend, though, we added another traumatic injury to her short list. She was coming down a slide at the playground when she accidentally turned her body so that her hip and foot got caught diagonally across the slide. This caused her to come to a screeching halt on the slide and to wail in pain. I picked her up, realizing it must have hurt, and coddled her for a few minutes trying to calm her down. When the crying nearly subsided, I tried to encourage her to get back on the jungle gym. I put her down, and she took one step and her leg completely gave out on her. She wailed. We went through the process again, and when she’d calmed down, I set her back down. But she could not put any pressure on her leg without crumbling over. Every time she tried to put her foot down, she cried “OOOOOwwwwwwieeee!”
Elise giving hugs to Shoshana's daughter, Lauren, 8 months
Of course, being the Worrier that I am, I freaked out and announced that we needed to go to the hospital immediately. This did not seem like a rash decision to me, as my 16 month old baby couldn’t put any pressure on her leg. But both Marty and my friend Christy basically told me I needed to relax and give it more than 30 seconds before running to the ER. She probably just twisted something. So I plopped her down and began frantically inspecting her ankle, knee and hip, looking for bruising or swelling. There was none. This was, of course, a good sign, but she still couldn’t put pressure on her leg so I continued to panic.
We drove back to Christy’s house, hoping that some time off of her leg would help it a little and that everything would be better by the time we got home. It wasn’t. At first, things were just as bad as they were at the playground, but after a little while she was standing and squatting without a problem, though she still couldn’t walk. A while later, she began walking a little, but couldn’t run without her leg giving out on her and crying “owie.” By the next day, she was running around like a maniac again without any problems at all. We never really did figure out what exactly happened. It was hard to tell if it was her hip, knee, foot, back or entire left side of her body that was actually injured, but Marty seems to think that she hyper-extended her knee.
I hate seeing my child in pain. That, on top of the fact that I am the type of person that worries and panics about pretty much everything, made for a very rough 24 hours. I don’t do it on purpose and I can't control it. I really wish I could see my child limping and think, “she just needs some time to rest and it will be better” instead of “she will be crippled for life,” but like it or not, that’s just who I am. I know that one day there will be worse injuries. I know that there is a good possibility that she could break bones or need stitches one day. I know that kids get hurt and that there is nothing I can really do besides keeping her out of obviously dangerous situations. But that doesn’t mean that I am going to freak out any less if and when those time come.
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