I got a phone call from a traumatized Gwen at work around noon today.
She was calling from a drop-in clinic on Granville Street: Aidan had fallen and she thought that he broke his nose and could I come home please?
So I threw my gear on my bike and rode home. They’d just returned from the clinic and I got the full story:
Apparently, while in a store, Aidan became frightened of a Hallowe’en display, stood up in the stroller and tried to escape by going over the back of the stroller. The inevitable happened, and the stroller tipped over backward, bringing The Boy with it. Apparently he smashed into the floor face-first.
They happened to be right beside a drop-in clinic and so Gwen rushed into there and was seen by some doctor. The doctor apparently didn’t even touch Aidan (who was pretty weepy) and told her to give him Ibuprofen and watch for signs of a head injury. They headed home and had just arrived when I walked in. Aidan’s nose was pretty bruised looking, and clearly swollen. It didn’t bleed more than a trickle when it happened, and was just a tiny bit crusty when I saw it.
Aidan was in good spirits, happily playing with the “new truck” that Gwen fished out of her purse. He wouldn’t let us touch his nose, and trying to ice it to deal with the swelling was pretty much impossible too. After discussing the way that the doctor had “examined” Aidan, we decided that if nothing else, we’d feel better if our family doctor took a look at him too. So, we walked down to the doctor’s office (sometimes living in the centre of the city has distinct advantages) and snuck him in. Dr. Izen took a thorough look and told us that things were probably fine, but she couldn’t quite tell if the nose was broken or if he had a deviated septum. Of course the now crying and squirming toddler wasn’t making things easy. So, she wrote up a requisition for an xray and we walked the block to get the xray (well, ok, we stopped into Wendy’s for some lunch in between too).
At the xray clinic, it was traumatic for both the toddler and the daddy. Aidan took one look at the xray table (where the tech wanted him to lie down) and started bawling. And clinging. The boy was like velcro. We tried a number of strategies to get him into place, but he’s very determined. The xray tech called in reinforcements and in the end we ended up wrapping him up in a lead blanket, pinning his legs and arms to his side while constrained by the blanket. And crying hysterically. The reinforcement was in charge of the lower half, and was losing that battle while I was in charge of the upper half and keeping his head more-or-less on the xray film plate and parallel it. I was losing that battle too. The tech got one shot off, ran to get it developed, and then passed it by the radiologist to make sure that it was a good shot. The whole time the reinforcement and I were trying to keep Aidan on the table and wrapped up in the blanket. The boy was still hysterical. Fortunately the first shot was apparently clear enough (no apparent break!) and we were able to release the rest of the boy. I say that because by that time he had worked a leg and an arm out of the cocoon.
And as soon as we exited the xray room, the waterworks turned off immediately. He even said “sorry” to the techs.
Anyway he doesn’t look too bad right now, and hasn’t been at all grumpy. Hopefully the bruising goes away after a few days…
