Back in April, there was a Friday the 13th. Normally, I don’t give much credit to superstitions, but this really did turn out to be a crazy day.
After Alexandra was picked up and taken to preschool, I headed out to do some grocery shopping. When I got back home, there were two messages on our answering machine. Both were from Sarah’s teacher. The first asked me if I could come pick her up at school as she had fallen off the merry-go-round at school, banging her head in the process, and had a terrible headache. 45 minutes later, a second call said that her head wasn’t hurting so bad now, after she had lain down on a mattress for a while, and she was probably fine to stay at school for the rest of the morning.
I felt horrible that I hadn’t been home to pick her up when she first got hurt. I am usually always home, just in case these types of calls come in, and the one time I really am needed I am gone. 🙁 It was already time to pick up Alexandra, which meant there was only about 20 minutes left of school, so I just left it and decided to baby her when she got home.
What actually happened was that she had been sitting on the swing on the kindergarten playground, eating her snack. Yes, she was swinging on a snack while simultaneously holding on to a plastic Tupperware dish filled with crackers. Which means she wasn’t really holding on to the chains very well. Sarah was, however, swinging quite high. At one point she was so high she was horizontal in the air, and that’s when it happened. Her grip wasn’t tight enough, she fell off the swing, doing a backward somersault in the air, and landed on her head and neck. On the concrete. Ouch!
She said it was the weirdest thing. She remembered flipping off the swing and the pain as her head and neck hit the ground, and closing her eyes as she landed. But when she opened her eyes again just a second later, a teacher was there leaning over her and asking if she was alright. But the teacher hadn’t been anywhere near that part of the playground when she fell. I asked Sophie what she saw, and she said that when Sarah fell to the ground, she ran to get the teacher on playground duty and told her what happened and that together they ran back to Sarah. Yes, they went fast, but it still took at least a minute or longer for the teacher to reach Sarah. I quickly deduced that she had actually lost conscious for a bit and that is why it seemed like she just blinked and the teacher was there. Yikes!
However, she said she felt fine now, no headache, so I let her go back for afternoon school. I even took her to violin lessons as usual. Afterwards, I decided to ask my brother, our family doctor, if he thought I should take her to the doctor for an exam, or if it was so minor I could just go on about my business. You see, in about an hour Sophie was going to be in her play for theater class and we had missed the last one because I wrote the time down wrong. I for sure did not want to miss this one. He advised me to take her to the doctor right away, but left the final decision up to me.
I admit it. We went to the play first. And Sophie did great! Here are a few members of the adoring audience.
See, doesn’t Sarah look completely fine? Sophie had a very short solo in the play and was very nervous about it. But she did it!
I got to help out a bit for the play, as I was the prop technician. This meant I made the lollipops the kids are holding.
Sophie helped me choose the paint colors and also helped with the assembly. They were originally wrapped in clear cellophane and tied with a white bow, which helped their lollipop look immensely. The kids took off the wrapping as part of their closing dance. Then they each got to take one home as a souvenir.
After the play was over, the actors sat down at tables in the back and signed autographs for their adoring fans.
There was quite a crowd gathered! The boys waited patiently while their sister basked in her moment of glory. It was very sweet.
The only thing I don’t like about Sophie being in these plays is the glimpse into the future I get when she puts on all that makeup.
Way too grown up looking for my heart. 🙂
When the festivities were mostly over, we packed up all the kids and went home. While Chris put everyone else to bed, Sarah and I packed a bit of reading material and headed off to the ER. After a bit of wait by Swiss standards, maybe 20 minutes?, they took her back to the exam room and started asking lots of questions. They checked her out thoroughly and determined that she had, indeed, lost conscious, and had a mild concussion. She would need to spend the night in the hospital for observation.
She also had to get an iv, which was kind of painful and made her cry. But I reassured her that I would stay with her all night and she wouldn’t be alone and the tears stopped. I don’t think it was the pain so much as nerves, poor thing. We called Papa and told him the news. He kindly brought us our pajamas and toiletries, along with clean clothes for the morning. 
By now she was all smiles, since we were going to have a little slumber party! The hospital made sure we had a private room just for us, and got me a very nice cot to sleep in. Sarah wasn’t allowed to eat anything due to her injury, but they asked me if I wanted to order breakfast. I told them I would be fine, as we only had to stay until the first 24 hours after the accident had passed, and she fell during 10 o’clock recess. 
It was pretty funny trying to help her get her shirt off and her pajamas on with that giant iv attached to her arm, but we managed eventually. Then we brushed our teeth and had a little chat in the dark until she fell asleep. I was close enough that I could reach out and hold her hand whenever she wanted me to in the night. Which I did often. The nurse came in every hour to check on her, but there was never an indication of a brain bleed or anything else.
In the morning we were sent on our way with a list of rules for the next two weeks. No tv, no computer, only a bit of reading, light schoolwork and no sports/running. She liked the last two, as it meant she had to do very little homework and got to sit out on the weekly run around the lake. But the rest was kind of tough, especially the reading restrictions. I eventually loosened up towards the end of the two weeks, and she has had no side effects whatsoever.
When I think about how close she came to being paralyzed (as she landed with her neck in a strange position), or having a serious brain injury, I get shivers. I guess it ended up being a lucky day after all, even if a bit stressful.