The Fall of Atley

Wednesday night the missionaries were teaching a family in our home. The children were playing upstairs and just as we were beginning to discuss the Fall of Adam. We heard a horrible crash. My first thought was that the kids had thrown a table or dresser or something over the balcony of our staircase. We all ran towards the noise. The investigators got there first and it only took a moment to realize that the loud crash was Atley's head hitting the tile. Carmen, one of the investigators, yelled that it was his neck, which was obviously quite alarming. She would know best since she was the first to see his grotesque position on the tile. He went over the banister somewhere near the top of the staircase, judging from where he landed and the sound he made when he hit. We assume he fell about 10 feet head first.

The problem with Atley is that he has this incredible pain tolerance so it is always difficult to determine how badly he is hurt when an accident occurs. He had a nasty purple bruise on his head but he seemed fairly coherent and he didn't cry very much. Scott and the missionaries gave him a blessing and the investigators went home, pretty shaken up I might add.

I hate this part as a parent-the what to do next part. Should we take him to the hospital? Should we wait? Should we call an ambulance like Carmen suggested? We chose to wait. We gave him some Tylenol and he became very sleepy. We let him go to sleep but after thirty minutes I tried to wake him and I couldn't. I was screaming at him, shaking him, sitting on him, throwing water on him, opening his eyes and they would just roll back in his head. I freaked out. Scott came up and of course he thinks this is nothing to worry about. Scott never thinks there is anything to worry about and I am almost always sure that the worst is right around the next bend. This is also the reason that Scott will live to be 150 years old and I will most likely die due to stress in my early Forties! The truth is we were both wrong we had a reason to be worried but, his brain wasn't hemorrhaging like I was thinking.

Scott says, "Have you ever tried to wake him up after he has been asleep for 30 minutes before? How do you know he isn't always like this?" I didn't know. The truth is when Atley sleeps we let Atley sleep. I put him in bed with me periodically attempting to wake him, by the way he was waking up but it was taking 10 minutes of Chinese water torture to get that to happen.

In the night he woke up crying that his head hurt and several minutes later he began throwing up and he kept throwing up.

Obviously, it was time to go to the hospital. They put him on an IV for dehydration. They took a cat scan of his brain and skull and everything was intact except for some scarring on his right frontal lobe, but the doctor assured me that was probably a birth injury and nothing to worry about. Thanks doc, you tell me my kid's brain is damaged but not to be alarmed. I hate doctors, especially the one that delivered Atley, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, the diagnosis was a severe concussion. Which of course is no big deal to Scott, but I of course had to remind him, Atley is a four year old kid, not an NFL Quarterback with little or no brain in his head to begin with. It is a big deal, especially to his MOMMY!

The truth is the concussion is a miracle, Scott and I both agree on that! That fall alone should have broken his neck and the fact that he landed where he landed and didn't fall an additional fifteen feet into the basement can only be explained by divine intervention. We are so thankful that he is almost back to normal and the diagnosis is positive. He doesn't remember what he was doing or how it happened and unfortunately the investigators will most likely remember the Fall of Atley much more than the Fall of Adam!

Looking at the picture of our staircase Atley fell near the rug, very close to the gate blocking off the basement stairs. In fact, we heard his body hit the gate during the fall. Hopefully, this will help you visualize how lucky he was to only fall that far and not continue to the basement.