Here are the posts (Balloons for Birthday Belle and The Moral is that Ambulance Rides Are Fun), if
you want to reminisce. I chose not to. Ha!
I have no real photos of those typical first birthday
moments – eating her first cake, opening her presents. So, this year, I wanted
to at least have a somewhat normal party but, once again, she threw up on her
birthday. Mark and I had already been fighting the stomach bug before she got
it, so we had already cancelled her party and, once again, moved it to the
following Saturday.
The week went by normally, and we all started feeling
better, but come Friday, E sounded really congested and spiked a fever over
100. Mark had the same symptoms as he was recovering, so I hoped that it was
just one last 24-hour farewell from this virus. Good riddance!
That seemed to be the case, because she woke up fine on
Saturday and had no fever. I decided to just have dinner at the pizza place
with Mark’s family, and I thought I’d make a cake. E and I ran out to get a box
mix – nothing fancy, didn’t want to jinx it, was too tired, and wanted it to be
easy for E to help with. Meanwhile, Mark was out spending the day with his
father at an sports-and-hobby convention.
E hopped up on a chair to help me at the counter. I turned
around to wash a measuring cup. Though E was still close enough to be at my
elbow, I wasn’t fast enough to catch her as she suddenly toppled over, hit her
chest on the seat of the chair and slid off, did a perfect swan dive, head
first into the hardwood floor, and let out a blood-curdling scream.
The guilt set in immediately. It always does, as my mind shuts
off, and I start to operate on auto-pilot. I scooped her up to check out the
damage. The skin was pushed together to create a little sunken spot, about the
size of a dime, on her forehead above her left eye. I nearly passed out as she
screamed, but I kept it together as the following thoughts raced through my
head (though, let me first assure you that she was absolutely, 100% fine): “Hole
in head, skull fracture, brain damage, death.” This is Anxiety 101, and no
matter how many times you work through the therapist-assigned exercises to “be
your own best friend,” to “self soothe,” to “work backward” in order to “stop
the train of negative thought” which inevitably goes off the rails, crashes
into a cliff, and explodes in a fiery ball of doom, death, despair… in an
emergency, even if only a perceived emergency, old habits die hard.
I grabbed my cell phone, keys, and ran out the door, headed
to the ER where I was certain that they would have to reassemble parts of her
frontal lobe. E was weeping softly now, as I darted down the stairs and the
cold January air hit me in the face. Maybe the cold woke me up a bit, or maybe
I just realized that I would have to put her down in the back seat and drive 20
miles to the nearest hospital. For some reason, I stopped dead in my tracks and
looked at E. Her head just had a small red lump on it, and she seemed excited
to be outside without her coat on, ready to go somewhere, anywhere.
I decided to do the next most logical thing – go inside and
call 9-1-1. I got to the top of the stairs and saw my neighbor’s apartment door,
which reminded me that he's an EMT and had told me before (when I called 9-1-1
after Ellie threw up when she was 4-months-old) that I could knock on his door
first. So, that’s what I did. I stood, shaking, waiting for him to answer the
door.
Instead, his wife opened the door with their 3-year-old son,
shared a few horror stories of her own (even a similar ‘hole in the head’
incident), and insisted that E looked fine (as she happily watched the little boy
playing). She suggested I call the after-hours number at the doctor’s office. I
eventually got ahold of E's pediatrician who was working overtime on a Saturday
(thank God) and who nonchalantly, and with a yawn, told me that, as long as E
wasn’t “more tired than usual,” she was fine. She said I may want to check for
other injuries, like a loose tooth or bitten tongue. “Who cares about that?” I
thought. “Did we really just go from ‘potential brain damage’ to 'a loose tooth'?”
Huge sigh of relief. Cake baked. Happy kid.
Mark came home soon after, then my in-laws arrived. The day
went on normally. Her party was nice, and she was happy to get some new
clothes, books, stuffed animals, and a Little People Bus.
Though I cried a few tears before bed (my anxiety is always
worse at night), I’ve almost fully recovered from the trauma, and E has happily
been talking about how she “fell off chair and went outside.” I’m grateful
that the story ended there and not “at the hospital" or with EMTs rushing through our door.
1 comment:
Anxiety sounds like a terrible burden. I feel for you and hope you continue to make progress in dealing with it.
"I nearly passed out as she screamed, but I kept it together as the following thoughts raced through my head (though, let me first assure you that she was absolutely, 100% fine): “Hole in head, skull fracture, brain damage, death.” This is Anxiety 101, and no matter how many times you work through the therapist-assigned exercises to “be your own best friend,” to “self soothe,” to “work backward” in order to “stop the train of negative thought” which inevitably goes off the rails, crashes into a cliff, and explodes in a fiery ball of doom, death, despair… in an emergency, even if only a perceived emergency, old habits die hard."
I sometimes have similar, horrible thoughts in reaction to or even in anticipation of an accident. Perhaps what separates a guy like me from someone dealing with a high level of anxiety is that I rarely get caught up in those types of thoughts. They don't derail me. I'm able to observe those tragic thoughts and think, "oh, that's unreasonable" and move on quickly from the negative thought pattern. So, I imagine it must be terrible not being able to let go of the anxious thoughts and return to reality.
I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this, but besides wanting to wrap my head around your situation a little better and show some empathy, I have something else rattling around in my head. For what little it's worth, knowing brain chemistry is tricky business and we all have our own factors contributing to our challenges, you have me thinking about thought in general and our relation to it.
Thoughts are just thoughts and we all have them, but we also often give them too much power in our lives. I like to think of them as secretions of the brain, an organ whose job it is in part to produce thoughts. Reality and our lives are so much more than anything that comes to us in thought or the closely related emotions. Positive or negative, we do not have to be entirely swayed by our thoughts. We can choose to let them go, we can, through practice especially, notice them as they come and then say, "oh, hello" and let them pass as quickly as they arose in the mind. You know, like clouds floating along, but not disturbing the deep blue sky. Classic Zen shit right there! Of course, easy for me to say, I'm not dealing with gut-wrenching anxiety.
So, probably nothing profound or very helpful. Just know this, you are certainly more than your thoughts and undoubtedly more than any anxiety-ridden rabbit hole you can fall into. Someday in the midst of one of those anxious spirals you may look up, see a little light and think, "hey, here I am down in this fear-filled hole and I'm okay!", and then maybe you'll climb out a little easier.
Or maybe I should keep my thoughts to myself. I don't know, but I definitely hope you keep working through all this and find peace.
Love,
Greg
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