Wyatt's Visit to the Hospital, Apr. 2020

 So, the other big event in April was Wyatt's excursion to the hospital.  On the same day as this--the school pickup of final packets, to which Wyatt went with me to wave to his teachers--he later was riding his dirtbike out in the yard.

I don't remember what I was doing, but Orrin RAN in and said, "Mom, Wyatt crashed," and it was obviously serious, so I ran out to where he was lying on the ground near the fence.  He was still lying there, not crying, and not bleeding or anything, but white-faced and kind of groaning a bit.  And that was weird to me, because most of the time when kids crash on the dirt bikes, they cry and they get up and either push their dirt bike toward the house, or just walk toward the house while crying or whatever, but Wyatt wasn't trying to move or get up.  So it was concerning, and I was like, "are you okay?" and we looked him over.  He had caught a handlebar in the fence and so he had jerked and a handlebar jammed into his stomach.  Brett came out and he was kind of like, well, looks like you're okay-- you'll probably be sore.  But that was it, and he went back to whatever he was busy with.  So I carried Wyatt to the couch, and I started a movie for him, because I figured that would cure him (no honestly, I thought it would calm him down and take his mind off of it, because my kids don't get movies any old time, so when they do they're quite glued to them).  But even setting him down on the couch he was very white faced and very moaning like he was very hurt.  So I was worried, but I thought I would give him some time and then see how he did.

Later in the day, we were having dinner, so I had someone go tell him to come up if he wanted dinner.  So he came upstairs, but then he started kind of whimpering/crying again, and laid on the couch, and I think he went to sleep instead of eating dinner.  So that was definitely a concern because I thought he might have been feeling a little better by then, but he was still super white and fragile-seeming.  So then we asked him more about how he felt, and that was when we noticed his belly button looked purple and bruised.  And I thought, yeah that might be a bad sign, like internal bleeding... So I called on my siblings and in-laws who are medical people, and sent the picture of his belly button, and Sterling CALLED me and said, "Yeah, I would take him in to get a CT scan.  Don't go to the urgent care or anything, go straight to the ER."  So I said, okay.  Megan also agreed and said to take him in.  (I'm so glad I have family doctors to call on anytime I have a question!!! Thank you Megan, Derek, Sterling, and Kami!!)

So I drove him in to the hospital, and honestly, by this time, I felt like he was fine.  He had perked up again, gotten his color back.  Was just fine walking into the hospital from the parking lot by himself, and he said his stomach didn't hurt unless he touched it.  So, I was feeling actually a lot lot better than earlier about him.  But they gave him an IV (and the person who put it in told me she has NEVER given a child an IV before where they didn't cry, and she was absolutely impressed by Wyatt not flinching or crying or anything.  I was like --yeah, you don't realize the highly held standards/expectations my kids have for being tough during shots--it's legit).

Here was the CT scan.

So the CT scan found that he had, indeed, lacerated his liver.  It was a 10 cm?? -that could be wrong- laceration. So then, because IF things should go wrong and they had to do a surgery, they would rather he be at Primary Children's for that, they decided to Life-flight him over.  (Actually it wasn't Life-flight, it was a different company, but a helicopter anyway.)  

So Brett rushed over with Hazel (who had to drive the car home that I had driven there in, much to her apprehension since she didn't officially have her license at that time, so she hadn't ever driven all by herself) and gave Wyatt a blessing and a hug before we flew away.

It was pretty cool flying.  I told Wyatt he should have gotten injured earlier in the day so we could have been watching during daylight.  Oh well.

So I feel like the most nerve-wracking part of the whole hospital part (where remember, I was never as concerned as before since he had perked up) was when we got to Primary and like 16 doctors surrounded him and checked everything (I only took a picture after many of them had left).  It was just a lot.  I remember hearing the person calling out all of the things say, "Scabs on both knees" haha.  And they found he had a little ear infection in one ear.  But anyway, as he was doing well, and they checked his blood and it seemed to be okay, they weren't going to do a surgery or anything because the liver seemed to be doing a good job on it's own of stopping the bleeding and starting to heal up.  So they just wanted to monitor him for the night.

They took his blood every few hours and checked the hematocrit and it all looked good and he was doing great and was hungry in the morning so they brought him breakfast, and he watched a lot of tv, and the nurse was like, "this kid does not belong here.  Let's send him home."  So we got sent home, and Brett drove down and picked us up.

We stopped and looked at the SLC temple which is under construction and --that reminds me-- right after Covid officially shut everything down, about a week later, there was an earthquake in Utah that didn't do a ton of damage, but it did make the Angel Moroni drop his trumpet!  So basically we felt like the end of the world was on it's way and there was a run on everything in the stores and so you couldn't get a lot of things like big bags of flour and DEFINITELY no toilet paper, etc., and everything was crazy.

So so sooooo grateful that Wyatt was okay!!!  I'm so grateful for all of the many many times Heavenly Father has protected our family, known and unknown to us.