The hazards of shopping

I became a statistic last week.  Not a good one, either! 

 

I took my kids grocery shopping at Costco the other day and thought I had them safely tucked inside the shopping cart.  Sure, Small wasn't sitting totally down but he was crouched back on his haunches at least.  And sure he was looking over the back end of the cart but he was holding on and 99% of his weight was pushed back into the middle of the cart.  It seemed a heck of a lot safer than having them clinging to the outsides of the cart somewhere.

 

And then I hit a bump...a fairly awkward bump...and I obviously hit it harder than I expected.

 

Small was pretty much launched into the air and sent head diving into the ground.  He hit the road with the crown of his head and then flipped over onto his back.

 

I'll just let that sink in for a minute....

 

Naturally, I was pretty horrified.  In fact, the whole thing still terrifies me!

 

But, the kid literally had NOTHING on his head!  Not a bruise!!  Not a bump!!  Not even a minor cut!  NOTHING!!! 

 

And that, quite frankly, terrified me more than the actual incident.  How many stories have you heard where people die of bleeding brains with no warning?  

 

I pretty much shook for the next three hours.  And, of course, in the middle of that time frame, I called the Nurses Hotline.  

I don't know why I bother calling the Nurses Hotline.  Nine times out of 10, they tell me to go to a doctor or hospital right away...just to be safe. So, really...if I'm concerned enough to call the Hotline, I should just skip the middle step and go straight to a clinic or hospital.

 

Either way, they started talking about skull fractures and I SWEAR I felt a minor dent in his head..so off we went to a clinic!

 

Two hours of singing and playing and dancing in the waiting room later, Small was a happy, happy camper and I feel a bit like a loser for wasting the doctor's time. But, you can never be too sure with head injuries!

 

The doctor told me how he'd been entertained with Small's rendition of the alphabet all afternoon (I guess he was louder than I thought in the waiting room...oops!) and did some minor checkings of his skull and assured me that he was fine. I practically begged him to find the dent that I SWEAR was there and he just chuckled at me as if to say, I bet you could find something wrong with him if you looked hard enough!

 

He did suggest we wake him up sometime in the night to make sure he could be roused and I told him that wouldn't be a problem since the kid wakes us up every four hours as it is. Situation normal!

 

Final verdict a week later? I still feel like a tool for launching my kid out of the shopping cart in the first place. But I'm fairly positive the kids will be a lot more compliant to sitting down in the cart than they have in the past.  And Small?? That kid is a little spitfire, let me tell you!  Not one iota of injury on that kid's head...I can't even find the dent anymore!!  Now if only we could get him to sleep better.....