Flattail Family Adventures: Ian's Concussion Adventure

Flashback to 17 June 2010

5:30 p.m. Ian's friend, Luke, comes inside and asks us to come out to the back yard because "Ian got a bit hurt." April finds Ian lying motionless on his right side on the ground next to the pond. He has blood all over the side of his head, but only one small cut about an inch from his eye. He can move his limbs and doesn't appear to have any broken bones. Luke relates how they were playing tug-of-war with a piece of bamboo and Ian fell from the tree above the pond. (Later we learn that Ian grabbed onto an apparently dead limb stump that broke off, causing him to lose balance and fall.)
5:40 p.m. April and Luke help Ian get into the house. Kevin and April clean up and super glue Ian's cut and further assess his condition. He shows all signs of having a concussion, but he is able to correctly answer any questions we ask (birthdate, address, phone number, how to calculate the area of a tetrahedron, etc.). We decide to wait and watch him for a while rather than immediately take him to the ER.
6:00 p.m. A friend stops by and helps Kevin give Ian a Priesthood Blessing. Ian feels nauseous, so he rests on the couch while the rest of us eat dinner. Then he dozes while he and Luke watch a movie on the laptop.
7:20 p.m. Ian throws up when we try to get him to walk. He can solve his Rubik's cube and still correctly answer all questions.
9:20 p.m. Ian throws up a second time when we try to get him to walk. He is annoyed with his parents still asking him silly questions.
9:45 p.m. Ian throws up a third time, so we decide that Kevin should take him to the ER to get things checked out, "just in case."
10:00 p.m.-12:30 a.m. Kevin and Ian spend a father/son outing at Logan Regional Hospital's ER, during which time the nurses and doctors ask him more questions to assess cognition (he checks out fine there), take a CAT scan (no apparent damage), give him anti-nausea medicine (which works like magic), conclude he has a concussion (just like his parents' assessment), and send him home with instructions to limit physical activity for several weeks.

Morning of 18 June

Ian awakens after sleeping soundly the remainder of the night. He is hungry for breakfast and feels almost 90% better. He is not happy that April won't let him jump on trampolines, go to his karate class, wrestle, run or jump for the following 2 weeks. He is a bit a proud of the black eye that he got from the impact, and asks us to document it with a photo journal taken over the following couple of weeks.

June 17