Toby Knapp

Toby Knapp

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Why is November the month of bumped heads and emergency room visits?

"If anyone knows anything about headaches, dad, it should be you..."

That's what my daughter, Kyla, told me on Wednesday night. She was complaining about having headaches following an accident at school earlier in the day. It seems she was acting out a scene from a book for a class and she was playing the part of a person who, I gather, had to be pushed out of the way from a car or something... and so, one of her classmates pushed her out of the way, and, Kyla says she lost her balance and hit the wall with her head, and then, continuing to fall, bumped her head again on a trash can. She texted me that it had happened but judging from the tone of her text, I assumed she was fine.

She did tell she was having headaches, however.

Now, I thought maybe she was just trying to ditch school the next day... because that's what happens sometimes, I guess. But she soldiered on to class the next day, still complaining of headaches, which, I take it, caused her to be "confused" about some math stuff and with some other assignments at school. Her student tutor actually told Kyla that she didn't seem like herself and that she should go to the health office... Mom picked her up and brought her home to rest...

Friday morning... Kyla goes to school... complaining of headaches again... and that's when her mom and I decided to take her to the hospital just to be sure these headaches weren't something worse...

So Friday afternoon, we're at Adventist Healthcare Shady Grove... and I'm watching my daughter pass all of the neurological tests I failed almost two years earlier... and as I watched the doctor put her through the paces, I could kinda tell she was going to be okay... the diagnosis? Post-concussion headaches. The treatment? Advil and rest... and nothing crazy. Limited screen time. No strenuous activities.

So that's what she's doing today. Resting. Hopefully staying off the screens.

What bugs me though, is that until she dropped that line on me about headaches... I had it in the back of my mind that she was probably embellishing her story to get out of school or something... and I'm kinda bummed with myself for letting myself think that... because she's right. If there's someone who knows about headaches... and what they COULD be after bumping your head... it's me...

I guess the thing I'm saying is this: Don't mess around with the head. If you bump it. Or your kid bumps it. And they say they have headaches... take it seriously. And move swiftly on it... because things could be much worse than a mild concussion...

Trust the guy with a giant U on the side of his head... who had some headaches he tried to ignore for a while this one time.

Meanwhile... if there's a Christmas gift we need at our house... it's probably matching helmets... what is it about this time of year with these medical things, anyway??!

-t.


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