Here we go again!

I had every intention of just letting this blog have it with all this crazy anger I have with the current election! I wanted to state what I felt was wrong and I wanted everyone to know how I felt! I started it with the clueless anarchists who think destruction of public property is the key to furthering their cause. But again, life happened. Relentless rants of non sense on my part gave way to fear, the fear of having your child go through the same thing he did just 4 short months ago. Payton received another concussion this last Saturday.
Count em', 4 concussions in his short 10 years of life and 2 of them in the last 4 months! This time it wasn't even obvious until he started getting frustrated when he couldn't express what he felt or answer the simple question of when his birthday is. Bobby knew something was up when during basketball practice earlier that day he got caught up in a what seemed harmless pile up under the goal. It was only later that Bobby knew that pile up wasn't as harmless as first thought when he found Payton chewing on his tongue. He told Bobby he couldn't feel it. He then said he felt like half of his face was numb. By the time they got home and woke me up (I worked the night before) he was already in a full blown concussed state. I asked him to squeeze both my hands and he couldn't do it. He just looked at me with hollow eyes and started to become tearful. He would try to tell me what hurt but nonsense words just came out of his mouth. That's when I knew he wasn't all there and that is was time to get him to the hospital. A few calls later and we headed off to ol' st. franny.
My mom met us there to get the other 3 kiddos so we could focus on Payton. We knew the drill and waited in our little stark white room till we were whisked off to CT. He never did throw up this time as in the other 3 times, which I guess is good. He was finally able to tell us his head did hurt. Our ER doc finally came in and talked with Bobby, Payton and I. The doc and Payton conversed and Payton was able to tell him who is fave skater was but not the year or what season it was. I think he even told the doc it was spring. The doc didn't seem impressed at all and told us he thought he was fine. He said he would be back with the CT results. I lost it. Granted I had only 1 hour of sleep after a 12 hour shift but this doc had no idea how far Payton was from his personality baseline and that this was his 4th concussion! I thought we had shared this info but apparently the young doc didn't quite grasp it. The doc stepped back into the room with the results of the CT which were negative but I still felt I needed to further the point of how concerned we were with Payton, negative CT or not. I don't think he realized that 4 short months ago we were here with the same thing and that Payton had a small brain bleed. I also reiterated the fact that Payton was nowhere near his usual state of extroverted, stubborn yet very pleasant and funny self.
I knew deep down Payton was going to be OK, I knew the symptoms would resolve. I wasn't looking for Payton to be admitted if the CT was negative. I just needed the doc to see our concern since I felt he thought we were crazy and overprotective. I knew I could monitor him at home and what to do if he turned for the worst God forbid. The doc seemed to get mine and Bobby's point and stated he would admit him for observation. We declined knowing that I had some expertise in this area and the doc was OK with that. He told us if the main symptoms didn't resolve by 9 or 10 that night to bring him back in and he would admit him directly. I could live with that. We could live with that.
Payton is doing fine now. Other than being tired his symptoms resolved by that evening. I knew he was fine when he started arguing with his sister. All was well at that point. But that doesn't put us out the woods just yet. I have a call in to our family Dr. to discuss Payton's future. As many of you know Payton is a very active athlete. As parents we are deeply concerned with this happening again and with the accumulative effects it will have on him. So while we wait for the Dr.'s call back I'm going to look into installing a CT scanner in our back room!