Some days make a difference

By the way, there is a video at the end of the blog worth seeing....


I was working on a blog about motherlove and bonding but then yesterday happened and was a real distraction.


Charlie has been well and truly under-the-weather for about a week.  So much so that we couldn't go to an exciting park date with his friends at a local park last Saturday.  He was holding his head, he had been crying for seemingly no reason and lying down to play with his cars. In the past these activities have been indicators that the shunt in his brain was either blocked or faulty.  Then, yesterday Charlie was looking miserable and wouldn't even eat his breakfast and Ben and I decided we needed to do something. We bundled Ned and Minnie off to school, and left Annie with her friend Sherlock, and drove up to the Children's Hospital at Westmead.

Our Emergency wait.  (Ben left his real glasses in the car! He kept saying he was 'light sensitive'.)

It was a long day in Emergency.  We waited more that an hour and a half for our initial conversation with a doctor.  Then more time went by and finally Charlie had an xray series and then a CT scan.  The last time Charlie had a CT scan he didn't require sedation (we used music), so the staff attempted to do it with him wide awake, at first.  He wasn't having it though. We put Monkey through the machine and everything but he refused to lie down with a lot of noisy protest.  So back to Emergency for that ghastly-tasting sedative Ben expertly squirted down his throat.  He has been known to have the sedative and remain wide-awake. I found myself praying that he would conk out because we really needed this picture of his brain!  And then he fell asleep and very deeply too.  So we raced back round to get that vital picture and then waited for the results....

                                                          All tests completed. Thank goodness.

The Neuro fellow appeared and announced that everything looked fine. YAY!! He  acknowledged why we had brought Charlie to the hospital but at this stage the ventricle was not noticeably changed from his last scan. Ben and I were relieved, whilst Charlie just kept on sleeping!


So it was time to go home and see our local paediatrician.


We finally got on the road about 6.30pm and headed down the M4 and then turned on to the M7.  Ben and I were chatting away, discussing how many children had come into Emergency whilst we had been there.  There were beds in the halls and then we heard they had even run out of beds as were leaving - just on a Tuesday afternoon.  


Then a semi-trailer entered the M7 and drove up very close behind us.  We were driving in Ben's little Nissan Micra so it was a little intimidating.  Ben drives up and down the Hume Highway everyday for work so he is used to trucks, but then this truck pulled out into the right hand lane and sped up to go bonnet to bonnet.  Ben couldn't get away from the truck and then I noticed that the truck wheel was getting closer to Bens door. I screamed as the semitrailer moved over into our left hand lane and pushed us off on to the thin shoulder!!!


Thank God for Ben's driving skills and his calm nature, and having a little car that could squeeze down the shoulder next to a thick cement wall one side and a menacing semi trailer on the other.
I think we both stopped breathing then.  As it dawned on us what had just happened and that we were alive and the car didn't even have a scratch.

Ben thanked the angels that were certainly there with us.




So a terrifying end to a Big Day.  It did make us so grateful to get home and hug Minnie and Ned, to tuck all of them safely into bed and to hold each other for a while.

                                      Annie and Charlie curled up together and crashed after a big day.

And here is a special P.S.
Although Charlie is still not 100% he wowed me again today.  Ben couldn't believe it, neither will the experts until they see it for themselves ....

-Go Charlie-