Last Sunday, we spent 5 hours in the Emergency Room at Children’s Hospital with Scarlett. Eariler that week, she complained her neck hurt but she would continue to play as usual and we would take her temperature frequently. Becuase if you google neck stiffness and pain in children the first thing that pops up is Meningitis. We watched her and she seemed fine. I took the kids to the YMCA and Scarlett and Lavender played in the toddler childwatch area. When I picked them up as soon as Scarlett looked at me she started holding her head and bawling. She’d scream in pain if I touched her head or neck and had me carry her to the car. The baby childwatch room has very little that she could fall off of…really…there is a small crawling tube and baby slide that Scarlett is taller than the slide is long. She tearfully retold a story about a boy not letting her down the slide and she was on her butt and then slid back and hurt her head. The description and the actual slide really didn’t match with the amount of pain she was in. She cried on the drive home everytime I hit a bump or turned the car. I had to carry her upstairs becuase she said her head hurt too much to walk. We put ice on it at home and she laid on the couch. We debated taking her in urgent care but, truthfully, we don’t much care for or trust the nearest urgent care facility and it certainly didn’t seem to deem a trip to the emergency room. Meanwhile, we got ready for the family to attend Disney on Ice and gave her some ibuprofren. We carried her to our seats, she sat stiff necked with a pained look on her face as she only moved her eyes to watch the Disney on Ice show. She cried when we had to pick her up and put her in her carseat. She cried that her neck hurt when she ate chicken nuggets. She sat hunched over and chin tilted down. She couldn’t lift her chin even up to a 45 degree angle. By the time we arrived home, we decided to take her to urgent care…it was only then that I remembered that there was a Children’s Hospital Urgent Care near us but when I looked it up it was already closed so off we went to the local urgent care facility. I thought Urgent Care. Jeff thought ER. We were in Urgent Care for 15 minutes when they said we really should go to Seattle Children’s Hospital as they weren’t equiped to perform the further tests that she would need. So off we went….
The whole way Scarlett was crying in pain until she just fell asleep only to awoken when I hit a speedbump at the wrong angle. She said her beck hurt, her head hurt and she couldn’t lift her chin upwards at all. We wait. We see the registration specialist. We see the medication specialist. Then the physician’s assistant comes in. She checks Scarlett out. Feels her neck, feels her head. Scarlett is joking with the lady. They rule out Meningitis but don’t know what’s causing her pain. She gets a neck xray. She gets an IV placed and they run bloodwork to test for infections. She gets ibuprofen and Valum. She gets another xray. She gets a stuffed animal and about a dozen stickers. We’ve been there for 5 hours at this point and it’s 3am. She doesn’t seem to be in as much pain but still no answers and Jeff & I are tired and irritable. We’re discharged and take her back to the van where she SCREAMS in pain when we try to put her in a carseat. I’m surprised that security doesn’t come around as it’s 3am in a dark parking lot with two adults and a child SCREAMING! We manage to get her in only for her to say she has to pee. I seriously contemplate just putting a diaper near her and dealing with the mess another day. But we got the bucket in the back of the van out but there was no we were getting her back into a carseat so Jeff held her in the backseat all the way home. She slept through the night and next morning. Jeff took the day off of work, I took her to her doctor and still no real diagnosis except that it was likely muscular and to give her tylenol and ibuprofen for the pain but also reassured us that we were right to go to ER because if they didn’t have the reports from the ER they would have wanted to run them as well. I’ve been trying to massage it for her and I can actually feel the heat from the inflamation in her muscles. It’s been 4 days now and she is still very guarded with her movements. I can’t brush her hair unless it is just washed as her head is too sensitive. I haven;t taken her to dance class or to the Y as someone bumping into her sends her into pain. In the mornings, she can’t get out of bed without rolling to her side and getting help. I took her to the chiropractor and sure enough her spine was out of whack (technical terms) and she did regain some range of motion after one visit but we’ll be back for more treatments. We don’t really know what caused her to become so out of align and in so much pain….hopefully she’s back to normal soon!
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