A Ride in a Rocketship

After working a full weekend on call, I get rewarded with a 4-day weekend sometime during the month.  We've been enjoying that time this weekend.  We went to a fun swimming pool that appeared pretty clean, followed by a nature walk through the jungle.  In the evening we enjoyed dinner with some friends.  Just after dinner, Caleb decided to take a swing in a hammock.  Hammocks are super-prevalent here, as many of the indigenous cultures use them every night to sleep.  Unfortunately, Caleb was having a little too much fun in the hammock and he fell to the cement three feet below with a crash.  Some kisses from mommy were applied, and he seemed to be doing much better.

                            Cooling off on a hot day.                                      

Caleb's jungle rabbit ears

Unfortunately, after the kisses we started hearing things like, "I'm sick," and "This car makes me feel really tired".  Over the next 3-4 hours back at the house, Caleb had SIX! episodes of vomiting, and he seemed much more drowsy than normal.  These can be signs of increased pressure inside the head (i.e. bleeding caused by the head trauma).  I called up my buddy Joe Martin, one of the other family docs here.  When I'm at home I'm "Daddy", and I don't like to be "Doctor" at the same time.  Joe was immensely helpful and understanding, and he arranged for us to have a CT scan of Caleb's headl in another town, as there is not one at our hospital.  We were thankful to the Lord that this was available, because often the scanner doesn't operate after hours (this was all going on at midnight).  We drove Caleb over to the next town, and the poor little guy was dry heaving the whole way.  Of course he was taking it all like a trooper.  In the scanner, Caleb was pretending like he was riding in a spaceship and he held very still.  Pokey, his little rag-doll teddy bear, got to ride too.  The head CT didn't show any signs of trauma inside the brain, and little Caleb started to feel better.  It looks like he's had his first (and hopefully last) concussion.  Caleb slept well from 1:30 am on.  We thank Jesus for watching out for our big little astronaut man! 

 

What we lack in choices of pop flavors, 

we make up for with choices of pop sizes.