A Moment That Will Be Imbedded in my Brain for Life

As a mom, you know you'll have to deal with bodily fluids.  It's part of having a child.  What they don't really prepare you for is when your child is hurt and bleeding.  There are the cuts and scrapes that are normal childhood things.  Those are hard to watch, but manageable.  You know they'll be okay. 

Then there are the nightmare kind where you are trying to assess the injury, stay calm to not freak out your child and having your mental voice scream in horror at the site of your child.  That takes it to a whole different level of motherhood.  It's the newest part of motherhood that I've been initiated into.

On Wednesdays we have AWANA at our church and Zoe is in the 3-5 year old class.  Our church has approximately 1,652 stairs.  You have to go on stairs from the moment you enter the church, so you can imagine in a night, how many stairs you have to go on to get from one place to the other.  Zoe's class is on the second floor.  If you're coming down from her class, you go down 5 stairs, turn a corner and go down another 12-15.  I've never really counted.  It's never been an issue.  Zoe is like an old lady on stairs, she's very cautious and very slow.  Two things I'm grateful for.  She has a healthy fear of stairs!

There are 17 children in her class.  Zoe was second in line, so that means there were 15 children behind her.  15 children who are much more fearless on stairs.  At the top of the 5 stairs, they couldn't wait and basically Zoe got pushed.  She fell, face-first down the stairs.  Her nose took the brunt of the fall.

I've heard it said that nosebleeds can have quite a bit of blood.  That statement cannot prepare you for seeing that happening to your child.  One of the other children in the class told his mom that she "was bleeding from her eyes, cheeks, nose, mouth and ears!"  Basically he thought her face exploded.  I have to agree with him, it did look like that.

Fortunately, God has His hand on her.  She had no signs of a concussion, but we still took her to the ER, which she was so excited about.  A real trip to the ER!  The doctor confirmed that she didn't have signs of a concussion, specifically no blood in her ears.  She may have broken her nose, but they'd have to do a CT scan to determine that.  Since she didn't show signs of a concussion, that would be quite a bit of radiation to a small child to see if her nose was broken and if it was, there is no treatment for it.

We opted not to do a CT scan.  By day two, this is the collateral damage:

A gnarly rug burn on her nose.  She carries some ointment in her pocket and periodically puts some on her nose throughout the day.  It's the sweetest thing I've ever seen.  She's such a trooper.

On Friday she got a sneezing fit.  She never complained about pain, so I'm pretty sure it's not broken. 

Now I'm fighting the urge to wrap her in bubble wrap, carry her around and protect her from all things that may cause her to bleed.  Meanwhile, she is becoming more fearless.  She's already trying to go down the stairs without taking the last step, on purpose.  A mere 84 hours post-injury.  We may have another visit to the ER sooner than later for mommy's heart attack!