Izzie's First Plane Ride

Wednesday at our house did not go at all like expected. The girls were scheduled to have pictures taken that morning and Alex and I were getting ready to get in the tub when Isabelle had an accident and fell out of her bouncy chair onto the tile floor in the bathroom. She cried so hard that I knew she was really hurt and really scared. She had a big bump on the right side of her head just above her ear that was turning into a big bruise. I took her to the pediatrician's office to get checked out. The PA we saw thought she looked fine-she didn't have any symptoms typical of a serious head injury (vomiting, sleepiness, etc), so she said to just watch her for the next 24 hours. A few hours after we got home the PA called me back and said she would feel better if we got at CT scan of Izzie's head just to be cautious. I thought this would be a good idea too so we didn't have to worry. The CT scan was quick and Isabelle was very cooperative. They told me to wait in the reception area and the radiologist would come tell me the results. The radiologist never showed up, but I got a phone call from the pediatricians office telling me to come over there so the PA could go over the results with me. I instantly knew it was bad news if they wouldn't tell me over the phone. It was bad news... Isabelle had a temporal skull fracture and an epidural bleed between her brain and her skull. I was told to go back to the ER where we would be picked up by ambulance and taken to the airport to the jet that was going to life flight Izzie to Primary Children's Hospital. Izzie was stable and doing fine, but she needed to be at a specialized hospital for children in case the bleed got worse and she needed surgery. At the hospital they started an IV and got her ready to go. Luckily they had enough room on the plane for me to go with her. The airplane was tiny and the ride was really bumpy, but Izzie just slept and was doing great. The flight nurse joked that she was a really difficult patient. When we landed in SLC they transported us again by ambulance to Primary Children's Hospital. My parents were waiting outside the ER when we arrived and were such a welcome sight. Poor Nathan was stuck in Seattle trying to get an earlier flight out of there. Luckily his flight home from Seattle lays over in SLC so he just got off of the plane and his mom drove down from Idaho with Alex to pick him up and came to meet us at the hospital. The trauma team checked Izzie over and put her in a papoose neck brace just as a precaution to make sure she hadn't injured her neck as well. She was not very happy about all of the poking and prodding. I tried my best to comfort her all the while trying to not be a bawling basket case. They transferred her to Pediatric ICU for observation and planned to repeat the CT scan the next morning. Luckily, the bleed didn't get any bigger and Izzie continued to be stable so she didn't require surgery. Thursday afternoon they transferred her to the infant unit. Although the CT scan of her neck looked fine they still wouldn't take off the big bulky brace that was making her so uncomfortable. There was debate about who was responsible for taking it off. At one point an ornery nurse practitioner came to see if she could take it off, but she said Izzie was too grumpy for her to examine her properly and she didn't want to wait around for her to get happy because it was time for her (the nurse) to go home. I tried to explain to her that Izzie was grumpy because of the brace, but the nurse wasn't interested in what I had to say. Luckily, the neurosurgeon came by and took it off and Isabelle was like a new kid. She was laughing, and making such a ruckus that the nurses kept peeking their heads in to see what was going on. The neurosurgeon said we could go home if we wanted. We were more than ready to get out of there. We decided to spend a day or so close to the hospital just to make sure she was still doing okay, so we hung out in Payson with my family until Saturday. We are so happy to be back home and feel so blessed that Izzie is doing so well. She is really, really, lucky. We are so thankful to all of our family who were there in an instant to offer support and do whatever was needed to help us out. Words cannot properly express our appeciation. We couldn't be more blessed and we love you so much.