the (inevitable?) fall

Yesterday, at grandpa Gary's, David fell down the stairs. Top to bottom. Grandpa Gary's stairs are carpeted, which was part of the cause and part of the reason we didn't have to go to the hospital.

He had been going up and down them all day. Typically, I am pretty uptight about staying down-gravity of him, but he never ever slips anymore. So I got lax. For some reason he tried to walk them rather than tummy slide. He can do this at home but at Grandpa Gary's, the railing is higher. He tried to take step and hold the rail, lost his balance, and twisted, losing his grip. I lunged for him and missed. He slid and tumbled down the 13 steps. At the bottom is a door. On the other side of the door was Jackie, Grandama Kim's daughter, who opened the door to look in and see what the commotion was about. David's head hit the door. It did not hit very hard--not even a real bruise. Jackie felt horrible, but if she had not done that, then his head would have hit the tile floor.

From the intensity and length of the crying, he was not injured as badly as he has been in the past. The carpeting and the wall really broke a lot of the downward fall. But he was sweating profusely and vomited the meal I had just fed him. In the absence of clear head trauma, I assume that he was terrified. But he recovered well. I squeezed and bent all of his joints without any protest from him. We called the doctor who told us what signs of problems to look for. I remembered the head-trauma maxim--"you should be worried if he doesn't cry."

In the end, all is well--except in my head. If I don't keep from thinking about it, I can still vividly see him tumbling down the stairs--still feel the terror and panic--and am still brought to tears. In the next three weeks, I will have a nightmare about it.