Photo taken in Guam, about thirteen years ago.

This is the infamous swing from which Joshua fractured his skull one week before his third birthday.  It all started  out  very early in the morning with me spending ALLLL DAY at the hospital with my poor, dear husband who  was having surgery on his knee.  We finally got home shortly before dinner and after picking up the kids (Joshua and Elizabeth at this point) I decided to take them to the park across the street from our house for a little bit.

As I was holding one-year-old Elizabeth on my hip and gently pushing Joshua in the swing with one hand, he began to complain about his wimpy ride.  I couln't really get the swing going any faster without putting Elizabeth on the ground and she was at a stage where she wanted to eat everything and anything she could get in her sweet little fist.  Well, in order to make his complaint a little clearer, Joshua let go of both chains of the swing and began to turn around to face me just as th swing began its upward movement.  This dumped him out of the swing and he landed mostly flat on his back, but sort of headfirst on the ground.  

At first I wasn't too concerned because falling was a very common occurrence with this child, but as he continued crying long past a normal amount I became concerned.  I rechecked his head and the bump was slightly bigger with a small, tiny gash--really, nothing new--and then I began to feel the ground under the swing.  As you can see in the picture, the grass had grown over the usual dirt pit you find under swings.  Well, I located a fairly big lump of coral poking up out of the ground under the grass and surmised that the child had probably smacked his head right on that point and that it was definitely time to go home. 

The pitiful guy stopped crying on the way home but didn't want to watch a video and didn't want a popsicle--both rare and much coveted treats--and he wanted to just lie on the sofa.  At that point I decided to take him to the emergency room and one of our neighbors kindly offered to drive me while her husband stayed with Dan and Elizabeth.  On the way to the hospital the poor boy began vomiting and we figured he definitely had a concussion.  After waiting in the waiting room for a couple of hours (like I hadn't seen enough of the hospital already that day!) we finally got in.  A doctor examined him, said he probably had a concussion and told me to wake him every couple hours through the night. and he sent us home.

Well, I didn't have to wake him every couple of hours that night because the poor child was up vomiting all night.  I took him back early the next morning and they decided to do a CAT scan.  Because Joshua was not well known for being able to sit still for very long (at all!), they anethesized him first.  This is where we discovered that these types of medications don't work on the child.  (We later had this reaffirmed on TWO other occasions!)  Six hours later, though, they found something that did work and he was wheeled off into a big, scary looking room with assorted pieces of equipment that looked more suitable for torture.

I waited in the hall outside the door and after what seemed like ages a technician came out and said they were done.  I went in to talk to the doctor or whoever it was who was qualified to look at the films and he told me that Joshua had cracked his head like an egg fracturing the skull, and that the good news was that the bones appeared to have not shifted at all and that I wasn't to allow my almost three-year-old son to bump his head for at least six weeks.  Riiiiight.   That's going to happen--NOT! 

We tried wearing a bicycle helmet when we left the house.  That worked for one day probably because it was a novel thing to do.  On day two I spent they whole time I was running the few errands I had to run putting the dratted helmet back on the boy's head.  Day three we spent at home and day four I relied solely on prayer.