After being treated for altitude sickness for an hour (despite me saying that it had come on far too quickly to be altitude sickness) a CT scan was ordered to figure out this headache behind her right ear. Let's just say it ended up with her being helicoptered down to Denver for emergency aneurism surgery. Yes, you read that correctly. Never, ever ignore a blinding headache. She came through the surgery and then developed the inevitable lung infection, literally fighting for her life for a week.
As I write, she is out of the woods, but still in intensive care and facing a long physical recovery program ahead. Given that none of us actually live in Denver (where she has to stay till end of Jan) it's going to be a logistical challenge, but we're trying to focus on the air miles! She keeps saying she ruined our Christmas, but really, she didn't. I mean she survived an aneurism fer cryin' out loud. I'm not picking any fights with her!
Seriously, it has been a really scary time but we are thrilled to have her back and bossing the nurses around!
Meanwhile, last Friday, I decided to accompany the Ball & Chain down to Denver to visit MIL. We discussed the pros and cons of leaving 3 kids up in the mountains, 70 miles away, for about 4 hours. (The Queenager is almost 19 so we were covered legally, btw). We decided to put the Little Guy in ski school ("That'll be the safest place", says I) and hope to goodness the other two didn't kill themselves. Actually, the snow was so bad that they preferred lounging around to "skiing on concrete". Having dropped LG off at 9.30am, we started out.
No lie - 15 minutes later we got a call from ski school to say that he had had a fall and was being treated for a head injury. Instead of voicing concern or becoming slightly hysterical like loving mothers are supposed to, I said "You have got to be joking". The hapless ski school kid didn't quite know how to reply so I explained the situation and asked her if it was serious enough for us to come back or not. Of course (liability, liability) she recused herself and said she'd find a paramedic to assess him.
Meanwhile, we decided to phone one of the teens to go over and at least be with LG. Ha! It seems I was the one who had the knock on the head. What was I thinking? Getting a teen to answer a cell phone? In this life? Really?
So we turned round and went back. To be fair, the paramedics were taking it really seriously. They put him on a board, stabilized his neck and gave him oxygen and transported him to the hospital. We caused quite a scene traversing the ski school area to get to the ambulance, him chattering away all the time despite the strap across his chin. Does nothing shut this kid up?
AND he's not allowed any "challenging cognitive activity" - which translates as no Wii, DS or other virtual games.
It's hurting me more than it's hurting him.