Monday, September 22, 2008

A Near-Death Experience

"Mom, did you hear I almost died in the shower?" Bantam13 asked me on Saturday afternoon.

"What??" I questioned.

"Well, I slipped and hit my head, and I was sort of asleep for a few minutes because..."

I interrupted, "Then you've had another concussion! Honey, you need to take it easy for a few days, like you had to before."

"Then I can't go running with Dad in the morning on Monday? We're trying to get back on our schedule," he explained. (For the last six weeks, they've been getting up before 6 to either run or work out; then they do Morning Prayer together. He's been loving this time with his dad.)

"Well, we'll see how you are, but I think it would probably be better to wait another day or so," I replied, recalling a newspaper clipping my mother, a nurse, had sent me after the other incident. It had emphasized that concussions, as a sports injury, are often underdiagnosed and way undertreated--kids are often sent right back onto the playing field, or expected back at practice the next day, although they may have had a serious brain injury. "I'll talk to Dad," I assured him.

I thought that was the end of the story, but later I heard him telling one of his siblings, "...and I was sort of asleep for a little while, but then I woke up and my lungs were full of water and I kind of threw up water, and then I could breathe."

"What??" I asked, for the second time that day.

"Yeah, I didn't get to tell you that part."

"Then--you really did--almost die in the shower?" I said inanely, as comprehension and something greater than thankfulness washed over me.

Later on that night, he vomited up a little more water, and on Sunday, he had a headache most of the day.

It turns out that while he was still overheated from the six-mile run he had enjoyed with his dad, he had taken a cool shower. Papa Rooster guesses that the blood rushed to warm his extremities, causing him to faint. "When you start to feel light-headed, you know you need to sit down and put your head between your knees, right?" he asked.

"Oh...no, I didn't know that. Yeah, I was starting to see blackness, kind of, just before I fell, and I wondered if I should sit down or something...."

Thank you, Lord, for preserving our son's life!

5 comments:

Heather said...

Wow! Glad to hear that he's okay. I can't imagine how scary it would be to hear your kid tell you something like that. I hope he's more careful in the future.

Islandsparrow said...

Thanking the Lord with you.

It really is a miracle our kids survive isn't it?

Mindy said...

Oh, how scary! Praising the Lord he is okay!

Megan Cobb said...

Yikes. That gives me the shivers! I'm glad he's okay, too.

Headmistress, zookeeper said...

How terrifying, and how wonderful!