On Saturday, January 25th Jackson wanted to stay up late (as he does most weekend nights) and play in the street with all of the neighbor kids while the parents hang out and chat. However, I had the craziest and most intense anxiety I’ve ever experienced. I had a very bad feeling (super rare for me) and made Jackson come inside early and go to bed. I’m definitely not an anxious person but I was almost/maybe having panic attacks (for the first time ever) and it was the weirdest thing. So, I spent the evening, and the majority of the night just praying. The next day I woke up a little better (although tired from praying instead of sleeping through the night) and we went to church. After church we came home and had our usual routine of lunch followed by a family nap. After naps it’s a rush to get the big boys ready for Awana’s at church. The bigs were ready a few minutes early and Jackson went outside for a few minutes to ride his bike with his buddies. He came back in a minute later and asked if he could go play with all of the boys in Brendan and Brants’ backyard (across the street from us.) I said yes, and just asked him to be back in 15 minutes so that Jay could leave at 4 to get them to church on time.
About 4 minutes later I heard massive screaming and crying and ran out the front door. Jackson was walking across the street towards our house, covered in blood. Several neighborhood friends were surrounding him and none of them would tell me what was going on. Jackson was crying and there was a huge gash in his forehead but there was blood all over his face, ears, nose, etc. so I wasn’t sure what all was damaged. I kept asking the other boys what happened and nobody would say anything, they were all crying. Then Brendan and Brant’s parents ran over and got the kids to talk while putting a cold cloth on Jackson’s forehead and a towel around his neck and shoulders. Jay and I loaded all of the kids into the van and drove to the nearest emergency room. Baron was hysterical crying looking at his big brother and Jackson was pretty much in shock. At one point he saw his reflection and commented that it looked like he’d been shot in the head. That was highly disturbing and I would definitely have started crying if I didn’t need to hold the troops together. Jackson was finally able to tell me that he had run into the yard and thrown down his helmet and started playing with the boys. Jackson was running and Brenden (who is 11 years old) had tackled him (headfirst) into the corner of a 4x4 protruding fence post. Jay was frantic and quite understandably terrified and drove as quickly as he could and I just prayed continually and thanked God for protecting Jackson from further injury.
We arrived at the ER and called my dad and Laura and they advised us to go to Dell Children’s Hospital to have a plastic surgeon sew him up. So, we loaded back up and headed to Dell.
Thankfully the first hospital had cleaned him up quite a bit. He looks so much better here than when we first saw him. Poor buddy was in a lot of pain.
Once we arrived at Dell they put some numbing medication on Jack. He chilled in this wheel chair waiting on the doctor. Poor guy was feeling much better after his head was numb.
When the doctor put the numbing stuff on Jackson’s gaping wound, Jay (who can typically stomach anything) realized that seeing blood is one thing. . .seeing your kids’ blood, is quite another.
We then decided that Jay would take the little boys home and I would stay with Jackson. The ER doctor told me that plastics wouldn’t see Jackson b/c they don’t deal with children unless they are put under and Jackson couldn’t be put under because of the magnitude of the head injury. I’ve since learned that this is completely untrue. I should have stuck to my guns and made them call plastics but I naively trusted the doctor instead. At least Jackson was in great spirits.
Before the doctor started working on Jackson an aide came in to explain all that would happen. She showed him all of the tools and he got to practice suturing a stuffed animal. He thought all of it was very cool and asked about a million questions.
When the doctor finally came to clean out Jackson’s wound it was rough to watch. He of course loved it and was asking questions the entire time. I have videos of the entire process. At one point I asked if she was touching his skull which I assumed was a stupid question. She answered yes, she was cleaning his skull because the protective lining of the skull had also been torn. So he had to have internal stitches on the lining as well as external stitches on his head. The picture doesn’t do it justice because it was really disturbing, especially for his mom. Despite being calm and collected throughout the process I was freaking out internally while looking at my sweet baby.
17 external stitches later he was still in a fabulous mood and even more excited that I told him that he could have unlimited tv the next day. You cannot even imagine how many prayers I said that day and how many times I have thanked God since then for protecting my precious guy. The doctor said that he was hit in exactly the right spot to avoid a brain injury. If he’d been hit on the left or right side of his head he could have shattered his skull. If his head had been positioned just barely differently he could have damaged one of his eyes. You can see the marks across his nose and down onto his chin. We also discovered that he fractured 4 baby teeth with the impact of the hit. The doctor told us to go see our pediatrician the next day for a concussion follow up.
We were finished at the ER around 10 p.m. and thankfully our good friends Bryan and Rebekah offered to come stay with the littles so that Jay could come pick us up. When we got home Jackson was super excited that Jay said he could sleep with us.
I love this little face so much and thank God every day that I get to parent this guy and his sweet brothers. This day was so intense and full of emotion, I was glad to finally go to bed.
