An accident looking for a place to happen.

Last week was an expensive week for my health insurance company. It began on Wednesday with my knee surgery. Last December, shortly before a dinner party that Rick & I were hosting for his office, Mark pooped his pants. I had to quickly clean him up and air out my house. I took his pull-up to the trash can outside and in the process slipped on the ice. I bruised my ribs, and also injured my knee, however because my ribs hurt so bad, I did not realize the extent of my knee injury. I further injured my knee when I bumped it into a coffee table, not once, but twice, when we were in Idaho in late December for my Grandpa Ison's funeral. I began to really notice the pain at the end of January. I took it easy, but still my knee did not improve. My neighbor/bishop is a orthopedic surgeon, so he looked at it and ordered an MRI. The MRI revealed that I had a tear in my cartilage, along with a sprain, hence surgery was scheduled to put me back together. When the doctor got inside he also discovered that my ACL tendon was hanging by a thread, so while he was in there he fixed that too. The post-op was not bad. I had a similar surgery done in 1991 on my other knee, ironically by either this doctor or his twin brother I'm not sure which, and that surgery was really bad. I was very sick to my stomach after the surgery, and spent 12 hours throwing up. I informed the doctor of this prior to my current surgery, and he made sure that I was well drugged with anti-nausea medication. I spent most of Wednesday sleeping, and practically all of Thursday lying on the couch. The real fun began Thursday night.


Shortly before dinner Mark and Lauren went outside to play. When it was time for dinner, I opened the door to call them in. I saw Mark on the sports court, down on his hands and knees, so I assumed he had tripped and fell, which he is very prone to do. He was crying so I called for him to come inside. When he got inside I tried to comfort him, however all he wanted was his blanket and a nap. The next thing I knew he was on the couch asleep. Lauren reported that he had fallen while playing with the soccer ball. We decided to let him sleep through dinner. After dinner we got him semi-awake and then Rick and I had to leave for a parent-teacher conference. When we returned from the conference he was asleep again, and this time when we woke him he wailed. The next thing I knew he was throwing up all over Rick. I stripped both of their clothes off and they headed for the shower. While in the shower Mark continued to wail, and was not making any sense. I called a neighbor whose husband is a brain surgeon and she suggested that we get him down to the emergency room as quickly as possible, and called her husband who was still at the hospital, just finishing surgery. (My goal last week was to see every doctor in my ward in a professional capacity. I hit 50%, not bad!) I questioned Lauren again about his fall and she said he was trying to stand on the soccer ball and fell backwards, smacking the back of his head against the concrete of the sports court.


We rushed to the emergency room, and while in route Mark would not answer questions or speak and threw up again. They got him in quickly and he was still unresponsive. Finally he said a sentence, albeit an illogical one. They did CT scan of his head to make sure that there was not any bleeding on his brain. He had to be restrained for the CT scan, which as you can imagine he did not like. Rick held him down. The scan did not show any bleeding and he was starting to come around. They determined that he had a concussion, and then the debate began as to whether or not to keep him overnight in the hospital.

Mark in the emergency room

scan and agreed that it did not show any thing unusual. He suggested that we take him home bMy neighbor's husband finished his surgery up and came down to see us. He had seen the CT ecause he would be more comfortable there, but we would need to watch him carefully all night, waking him every hour and checking his pupils to make sure they were responsive. He said Mark would be cranky and irritable for the next few weeks, to which I responded "well then he will be acting normal." Rick and I took him home and I took the first shift watching him until 2:00 a.m. and Rick took the second shift. The next day his head was sore and he told Matt that he broke every bone in his body, then later changed his mind and told Matt that he broke his head.

I figure between my surgery and Mark's visit to the ER I probably cost the insurance company a good $8,000 last week. The sad thing is the was not Mark's first visit to the ER, it was his 4th, and he is not even four yet. Like papa says "an accident looking for a place to happen."