I didn’t mean to scare anyone with my vague description of our emergency room visit. (But thanks for all the calls and emails of concern.) I get a little weird about relaying too much information here – particularly of the medical kind – but it really turned out to be okay. The short version is that on the way home from a pool party, F started screaming and crying uncontrollably. She was hard to settle and lethargic all evening and into the night, but had no other symptoms like fever, etc. We chalked it up to being overtired and over-anxious about mom. I’ve been gone so much the past two weeks, and a bit spaced out when I have been home. As it neared midnight we realized that it was more than exhaustion and anxiety. She was in pain. She couldn’t turn her head to the left (which is the way she turns to suck her left thumb for comfort – poor thing) and she couldn’t look up. By midnight her head was falling to the right and she wasn’t moving a whole lot without prodding.
Fast forward through the emergency room, lots of evaluations, some medicine and a few x-rays, and we determined that it was muscular – not an infection (scary). She must have suffered some type of muscle spasm in her neck that was extremely painful and as a result she stiffened up and eventually stopped moving altogether. Determining this from an exhausted toddler in pain is not easy. Watching her so miserable was even worse.
Ibuprofin worked wonders, and she seems to be back to normal two days later. She had a good follow up with her doctor, and we know for certain nothing is wrong with her voice. Because this child is LOUD. I mean, really, really LOUD. When you look up the phrase “inside voice” in the wikipedia of her brain it comes up blank. If you are wondering what you can get her for her second birthday, instilling that definition into her would be great. Or a muzzle. Your choice.
Speaking of inside voices, we have a new sound for our inside voices… ECHOS. As in, the sound our voices now make with the plastic back down between the temporary living room and the real one. JOY!
Sunday evening we told M through the plastic that dinner was ready. Normally he would walk out the front door, down the sidewalk to the back door, and come into the house to eat. All of a sudden we heard the sound of tape and the rustle of plastic. After too many months* to disclose here, the plastic came down.
You should have heard the squeals from me and from E! Loud, beautiful, echoing squeals. And then F looked at us with a giant smile that seemed to say “FINALLY! Someone else is speaking my language!”
…..
*That statement was not intended to suggest on this blog that this project is dragging on forever**. I say that enough in person.
**That statement was meant to be funny (and only a little bit true). If you are wondering why this project is taking forever, see the past one hundred posts here. We can’t catch up.