head wounds and scary lows

As prepared as we were in the medical supplies and accoutrements for Ellie's T1D care, I was completely UNprepared when the call from the medical bay aboard the cruise ship called to announce our son was in their care.

What?

Just an hour ago we had registered Ben, our 7 year old boy, to attend an evening playing in the supervised child activity center cheekily named Ocean Adventures.  We were told it was 'Survivor Night' and he would have a grand old time with his older cousins battling it out until the end.

The end came early.

According to the activities director, Ben climbed a padded pole (used earlier in a game, but off limits n-o-w) and attempted to leap into the air in order to jump over his crouching cousin.  A move that, had he made it, would have crowned him the unofficial super-survivor of the young male crew. 

But he didn't make it . . . . . hence the phone call.

Instead of landing on his feet, Ben landed on his side/back and his head come into contact with the only non-padded part of the play area, a door threshold. 

"Not serious!", according to the director on the phone.  Simply following procedure to take him down to see the doctor.  No need to worry.

Dave decided to go see what all the fuss was about while Ellie and I stayed behind in the stateroom.

More time than I thought reasonable passed, and just as I was getting ready to search the boat, in walked Head-Wound-Harry sheepishly sporting three blue stitches in the bad of his noggin.

While Dave was trying to explain to me why my baby boy had plastic threads hanging out of his hairline, Ellie was quietly walking around and whispering 'something' about 'somewhere.' 

Ben being examined the next day by the same nurse who was there the night before. 

A couple of more minutes pass as I learn the story of how a cute, blond Romanian nurse swept Ben onto the steel table to be further examined and how the doctor had to be paged away from the Captain's Dinner table.  Just a few stitches to close the wound and to keep an eye on him for the next 24 hours. 

:: Ah, breathe out ::

Out of the corner of my eye I spy Ellie slumped to the floor, her back against the bed and her legs splayed out in front of her.  She is holding her blood glucose test kit open on the floor and has already pricked her finger.  As I turn to give her my attention, she announces "You guys were talking and I was trying to tell you I felt 'shaky' and I couldn't wait so I just grabbed my test kit and tested".

"Okay.  Well, what are you" I ask?

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I grab a juice box and throw it at her and start to pummel her with questions.  "How long have you been 'shaky'?" and  "Why are you slumped down like that?" and "Why didn't you interrupt us!?" all the while watching her eyes to see if she is with me or not.

She says her legs hurt.  She says she feels really bad.  She says "I don't like this."

And we wait.  Wait until the juice box is gone and her symptoms subside.

She continued to complain of leg pain and now tummy pain and her eyes are still kind of off . . . faraway.

We retest and she is somewhere in the 60's, (coming up!) but she is still complaining and won't move from her position, so we give her some more fast-acting sugar and wait.

Finally she sits up a little straighter, looks me clearly in the eye and says "Wow.  That was scary.  That was a bad one.  I feel better now."

:: Breathe out ::

And we move on with our vacation because nothing about the above occurrences are a rarity or even a plans-changing-crisis when you are a parent.