Darci's Goose Egg

Many of you who read this already know that this happened. But I just thought I'd post about it just so I remember myself. :)

You see, we have a home with a second story. We have a banister that curves as it goes up the stairs. After my kids saw the movie, "Mary Poppins", they began trying to slide down the banister. Anytime I would see them try, I would immediately tell them to stop and try to warn them of the dangers of falling off the banister.

So, I'm not exactly sure what Darci was doing when she fell from our banister the first week of June. Matt and I were in the kitchen when I suddenly heard this horrible thud. It was so loud but was strange in that it didn't sound like furniture falling...I knew immediately that something bad must have happened. Darci began wailing and I ran to find her face down on our marble floor. She was kneeling but had her face down and was holding her face. I immedately had her sit up and I just saw lots of blood on her face. She had blood running from both nostrils. So, I ran to go get some wet paper towel. When I came back and moved her bangs our of her face to clean her face, I suddenly saw the HUGE goose egg on her forehead. That's when I began to realize that she had probably fallen from a great height. I said, "Where did you fall from?" She was still wailing but pointed to the second floor landing and said, "I fall dOOOWWWN!!!" I asked her again because it was so shocking that she had fallen 9 feet! But when I looked at the tile on the floor I saw two small cracks. My little Doozer's head had cracked marble!

(this picture was taken by my sister, Tami of tamipaigephotography.com)

 We checked to see if she could walk and laid her on the couch debating about what to do next. We called our brother-in-law, Aaron who is a physician and asked him for advice. Then she began to say she was going to throw up...that was when I began to feel panicky. So, I got her in the van and began driving to the hospital. On the way, she began throwing up...poor baby. When we got to the ER, I carried her in and when they heard how far she had fallen they immediately phoned for someone to bring a stretcher. They placed their hands on either side of her neck to keep it from moving and got a tiny neck brace on her. That was when I began to feel like I was going to cry.

 They asked her questions and I had to explain that she has a significant speech and receptive language delay. They said, "Oh, so it's normal for her to have speech problems?" ....yeah, good for them to know! The whole time I was so nervous that they were going to think I had thrown her over a balcony or something and I would be carted off by DCFS. I just kept praying that they would believe me...but most of all I was praying for my little Doozer that there wouldn't be any brain damage. They ran CT scans and Xrays on her spine. Darci was such a trooper and laid very still the whole time. I was so proud of her and just SO sorry for her. All the results came back fine, praise God!! We were discharged and went home.

 Over the next couple days, whe got pretty puffy. This is about the only picture I got of her. She got a lot more bruised before it got better. And poor girl had to go to another church and to VBS looking like she had been the loser in a really bad boxing match. But kids are so resilient, she was pretty much back to normal in just a couple weeks.

 I'm just so thankful for my healthy girl! It was frightening to think that instead of traveling out to our friends' home two days after the accident, we could have been planning a funeral. It has made us more grateful for every day we have with our precious children. What a gift they are and I am full of gratitude that God's angels were there to protect her as she fell.

So, that's the story of Darci's very large goose egg.

-Bek