Eleanor's Hair-raising Adventure

Last week, my sister and I were driving all the kids up to Star Valley, WY for our family reunion. The husbands were coming the next day. We stopped at Little America to get some ice cream and let the kids play. Eleanor was climbing up the slide and stood up into the bar that goes across the top. She cried for a minute; I checked her out; there was no blood or anything, so we went on our way.

About an hour later (by now we are really in the middle of nowhere Wyoming) she starts to complain that her head hurts. And then, pretty quickly she starts deteriorating. She can't stop crying, is fidgeting around the seat, can't see to find her drink (right next to her), etc. At this point, I start to worry that it's not just a headache from wacking her head. Jenny starts to look up the nearest hospital, which is in Montpelier, ID. So, we do a u-turn and head there as quickly as we can. Every time Eleanor cries out, Jenny's little Evie joins in too, so the noise is just getting louder and louder. Meanwhile, we're trying to get in touch with our parents and all my siblings who are headed up to the reunion as well, but there is no cell-phone reception there.

We were only about 15 minutes from the hospital, which seemed a lot longer. When we got there, I pulled Eleanor out of the car and while walking inside, she couldn't even step normally. I drag her inside and there is not a soul in sight. Imagine it like a scene from the Twilight Zone when you finally find a hospital when you're desperately in need of help, only to find that there is no one there! Finally, someone must have heard her screaming and came to help us. The next few hours were pretty awful. She was acting like she was in horrible pain, and not responding to my voice at all. She kept crying out for me (even though I was right there) and then praying out loud to Heavenly Father and saying "somebody, please help me." Scary stuff! She didn't know her name and couldn't answer any questions. The nurses were trying to find a nice way to ask me if she was normally like this! At this point I called Gavin. He wasn't prepared for that type of call and was beside himself with worry. His powerful prayers and the many others that joined him helped a lot at that stage.

The nurse found out we were LDS and wanted to get a blessing for her. Turns out the Radiologist was a bishop, the x-ray tech a member as well. So, they were able to give her a blessing and then turn around and give her a CT scan. There are some benefits of being in small-town Idaho! She had to be sedated for the CT scan, so she was finally calm for a while. The nurses wrapped up her IV, in case they would need it later. One sweet lady folded up a dollar bill and stuck it inside her bandage, so when she woke up, she'd have a prize for being so brave! When the results came back, they found no bleeing in the brain, so they diagnosed her with a concussion. Seriously? I had seen family members with concussions and it didn't look anything like that, so I hadn't thought of that. We did finally get in touch with all our family, so they'd come in force to the hospital to help.

They didn't know how she would behave when she woke up from the sedation, so I was worried about that. But, after coming to, she did reconize me and knew her own name. She said her head didn't hurt at all anymore. The only thing bothering her was the IV. Whew! She did throw up, which everyone was expecting, because it's classic concussion behavior. She was up to a quick visit from the family, including Katie, who was so relieved to see her doing better.

We got to stay the night in the CCU and "slept" between hourly neurology checks to see if she still knew who she was. Gavin and my brother-in-law left as soon as they could and drove all night to get there. Come 4 in the morning, when she said she was going to tell the nurse a joke the next time she came in, I finally felt like she was ok. In the morning, the doctor checked her out and said she was good to go! He was suprised, and said he had expected to see something bad in the CT scan. So, thanks to so many prayers from our ward, friends, and family, she is miraculously fine! We spent the rest of the week with our family incident-free!

So, that's our saga for the week. It may have left me needing therapy, and definitely added to my plentiful grey hairs, but I've rarely felt so grateful for every little thing. Just hearing Eleanor speak a coherent sentence is a pleasure!