Cervical Strain: Neck Injury

Today I thought I would be uploading Christmas pictures to the blog and telling about our wonderful Christmas day. However I feel more compelled at this time to write about the events of Dec 26th instead of Dec 25th. (Don't worry I will get Christmas at a later date but it will have to wait.)

On Christmas we spent the night at Matt's grandfathers house along with most of his aunties, cousins and siblings. (His Grandfather wanted the whole family together, it was a blast). We woke up at the kids normal 7:00am, amazingly most everyone else was up also, so I made a run to Starbucks sans any kids. While there Matt phone's me that Matteo fell and needs Motrin, slight concern runs through my mind. When I get back I found my baby laying on Matt's chest not moving a muscle with ice on his neck. When I picked him up off of Daddy he screamed bloody murder until he manged to get back in the same position and again he stopped moving and just kept saying oww. All I could think about was this is my kid who the day before fell down 3 stairs and stood up looked over said oww and went on playing, this is my kid who chipped his front tooth and I have no clue how he did it because he doesn't ever show pain.

We were heading to the hospital. Matt, Karlee and I took him to Sierra Vista. He did smile once in the car when we put on his favorite song but mostly he was trying to fall asleep, which of course I was not allowing him to do, afraid of a concussion.

We got to the hospital about 8:15ish. They proceed to take is blood pressure which was through the roof and tried to keep him comfortable. Anytime we moved him he just screamed and would hide in his blanket. One of the nurses brought in a TV and VCR and put on Aladdin. That really helped him calm down but not enough that he would let anyone touch him. They did x-ray's which I couldn't be in for because of the pregnancy so it was up to Matt and Karlee to hold him down screaming while they took the films. They came back showing no broken bones so the doctor was leaning towards a really bad muscle strain, and decide it would be best to give him pain meds and see if she could exam him that way.


Pain meds it was, they shot him up and he finally calmed down enough the doctor was able to get a good look at him but he still would not turn his neck to the left. He would looked only to the right. We tried to get him to turn his neck every way we could think of but nothing, he would just reach back with his arms and try to blindly grab at what we had. So....the doctor said if it was her kid she would want a CAT scan just to be sure there was truly no fractures and whatever else the CAT scan showed. Off to the CAT scan we went. This time I did go down the hall with them, because if he didn't hold still they were going to sedate him. Thank God, he held still. They suited Matt up the heavy lead vests and had him stand right by the tube talking to him. And with the pain meds running through his little body he laid there like a champ.

Again we were lucky everything came back normal so he was diagnose with a Cervical Strain Neck Injury. They told us to keep him on Motrin for the next 24hr or longer and with a baby his age we should see improvement by tomorrow. Before we left they gave him the first does of Motrin (on top of his other pain meds) and at 12:30pm we walked out the hospital with a highly doped up 2yr. He fell asleep in the car and then woke up when we got home, still very uncomfortable and not moving his neck. At 2:00pm he feel asleep again until 6:00pm. He was still in pain but wanted to play with is trains so we propped him with pillows laid him in a direction he would see the trains and he drove them around for awhile. At 9:00 we tucked him into bed between us and he as out until 7:00am this morning minus a Motrin hit at 4:00am.

This morning he is doing much better he is actually moving around and playing but will still point to his neck every once in awhile and say owww. So everything seems on the mend yeah!! We are just going to hang low and not making any sudden movements around him.

There you have it our exciting day after Christmas. Here are a few pictures I took last night.

His hospital Tag.



Trying to play trains.