The Dunn's: ER Experience!

Truly traumatizing! Those words describe our first ER experience. What started off as a beach trip with family for Brady's birthday ended as Braylor having a major black eye for several weeks! Long story short, Braylor was swimming in the kiddie pool with his cousin, Cole. (Kiddie Pool defined as having less than a foot of water.) Erica and I were sitting in chairs laying out while the kids were swimming. Nana and Papa were sitting in chairs by us as well. Anyways, Braylor was walking around in the water (that comes up to his knees), and he starts to fall. I am watching the whole time as Nana for some UNKNOWN reason decides to take off running towards him because she thought he was "drowning". (Just to be clear, if he would have come CLOSE to drowning, I would have saved him). It all happened so quick, and as he was in the process of standing back up, she FELL on him because she could not stop herself from running in the water. She knocks him down, which slammed him against the edge of the concrete pool, and of course, he starts crying hysterically. I am already over there by this time, and all I see is blood coming out of his eye that he can not/will not open. My first thought was he lost his eyeball. Erica and I run inside the condo to see what we can do. We still can not see inside his eye. We give him some Advil for pain and try to open his eye. From what little bit I could see, it was only blood. No eyeball to be found. I was scared to death! It was already basically swollen shut by this time, and we were unsuccessfully trying to put ice on it.This whole time he is SCREAMING, which is very much out of character for him. After about 30 minutes, he stopped crying and went to sleep. (I know, he probably shouldn't have gone to sleep, but it was naptime anyway, and I just wanted him comfortable.) I snapped a picture while he was sleeping. I would not let him out of my sight!

Finally, I called the pediatrician to see if he thought he should go to the ER. I felt like we should, Brady thought it was ok. I just knew if something really was wrong, I would never forgive myself (or Brady) for not taking him and doing all we could do. So, the pediatrician said if it was swollen at all, we needed to go because swelling is usually associated with internal damage. So, we were on our way!

God (and the GPS) led us to the perfect hospital. They actually had a pediatric ER! There was a waiting room full of people when I walked in. I thought that we would be there ALL day by the looks of it! However, when I went to the window to sign in, the nurse took one look at Braylor, stuck her arm through the window, felt his head, and immediately took us back. That scared me to death in itself! We went on back, weighed, and the doctor came to look at his eye. It took the nurse, doctor, and Brady to hold him down to get his eye open so they could look. I am just standing there being no help because I can't stop crying myself! I couldn't stand hearing the torturous screaming that I heard knowing I could do nothing about it. They found that the eyeball was ok, but that he had 5 deep cuts, 4 under the eyelid and 1 on top. The ones under the eyelid were causing the bleeding that we saw. The doctor ordered a CT scan, because of the swelling and the threat of internal damage. I had to hold his head completely still. He tee-teed all over himself during the scan :( He was traumatized!!!

The results came back normal, and we left with a prescription for a cream to rub on his eye so that the cuts would not get infected. The next day, it was still very swollen, but he had his happy disposition back!