Ellie's Emergency Room Experience

So today we experienced a first for our family - Ellie took a ride in an ambulance, as a patient! Thankfully she is fine but she absolutely gave me a fright. She and I were walking down to pick up the big girls at the pool and she decided to run down the wheelchair ramp, as she often does. Sadly this time she tripped at full speed and landed on her face without breaking the fall with her hands at all. She ended up with a pretty deep cut on the inside of her upper lip and her face had skid marks all over it. I wasn't that worried though - she wasn't crying, she was just subdued and seemed a teensy bit disoriented. I went into the pool and got ice from the staff and held it on her lip while she just lay in may arms but then she told me she needed to throw-up. When I took her into the bathroom to the toilet she full-on collapsed on the floor, at which point my concern began to escalate. I took her out of the bathroom and conferred with some of my mommy friends (thank God for mommy friends!) who suggested I check if the pool staff had anyone medically trained who could help us, meanwhile Ellie barely had her eyes open and was limp in my arms. The staff decide to call 111, lay her on her side and administer oxygen. Her little pupils were just pin-pricks, she was clammy and not really very responsive and I was getting more and more nervous as it was getting harder to keep her awake. Some man I've never met before came and talked to both of us to try and help keep Ellie awake and the pool staff were fantastic. Finally the ambulance arrived and their mere presence calmed me down considerably. They decided she needed to be taken in for observation, that she probably had a slight concussion. Off we went through rush hour traffic to the hospital where we stayed for the next four and a half hours, but at long last we are home and Ellie is fine. Poor Dugald was in Auckland today so he landed at the airport to texts from me saying that Ellie had been hurt and we were on the way to the hospital. Thankfully though by the time he got the messages we knew she was going to be ok. I'm so grateful to my sweet, sweet friends who all pitched in to help by taking my girls, going to my house and turning off the oven and calling and texting. I was only scared for a short while but it wasn't fun while it lasted!

By the end of the ambulance ride she was already a lot perkier.

My little bruiser.

Final check before being discharged - you'd never know anything had happened. Well, except for the scratches and whatnot. By this time she was LOVING all the attention.

Thank you friends for helping us, thank you God our girl is ok. What a day!