I’m back, more or less.

One of the odder aspects of my now-infamous fall from the ladder two weeks ago is that I have absolutely no recollection of my ladder adventures that day. I was more or less unconscious in the hospital for the first two days, and slowly came out of it after the next day and a half.

So what that means is all of Laura’s worries about me, as expressed by her and harmonically echoed by friends and family, is all third-hand. I literally was not conscious, and thus the many expressions of concerns since then have been odd and interesting.

My personal favourite is how so many females, including my wife, have tried to forbid me from ever climbing a ladder again. First off, I have no recollection of the fall, so I have no knowledge of my error. And second, one accident did not install a mind-numbing phobia this time around. I’ll be up on the ladder in a few weeks, when needs must. In the meantime, of course I won’t head up the ladder—Laura will have to, to finish cleaning the eavestrough. But I will spot her. 🙂

After the weekend Peter’s been improving by leaps and bounds. Yesterday friend Erik came over for a visit and saw Peter at his liveliest he’s been since the accident—lots of laughs and good times. (Mind you, Peter needed a lot of sleep afterwards.) Other friends Kristen, Ian, Jamie and Liam (and today, Daniel) have also kindly dropped by to take Miss Photon for some badly-needed afternoon walks, thank you guys!!

This morning was spent at the Head Injury Clinic for a follow-up appointment. (And it was the whole morning; appointments at hospital clinics always take forever.) I tagged along (in case Peter’s head exploded or something, I guess), but as it was completely uneventful I needn’t have. Evidently the doctors are not too concerned about his brains leaking out: His next follow-up isn’t for another six weeks.

Well, we’ve almost gotten through the weekend and I can’t wait till the school week starts again. Suddenly there’s three beings to look after and it’s been quite the juggling act for me.

Peter’s stayed mostly either in bed or lying on the couch. He’s having horrible splitting headaches not helped much by Tylenol, and is still woozy and foggy-headed (though he’s getting occasional glimmerings of his sense of humour back). Food is not at all attractive to him. I can empathize: when I get migraines (thankfully a rare occurrence) I usually end up throwing up. But over the last few days I’ve only been able to get a total of a couple of bowls of cereal and fruit into him. As Grandpa S. said to me over the phone “It’s a hell of a way to lose weight!”

Peter’s tolerance for noise and kid-induced mayhem is also drastically reduced (not surprising: with post concussive syndrome irritability is a prominent symptom). Unfortunately, Jon also knows how to push all of Daddy’s buttons the wrong way (and right now those buttons seem abnormally easy to push), and the two are often locked in a battle of bratty provoking/sniping at each other, which often ends in Jon having a huge crying fit. So when they’re in the same room I have to stick around to referee, especially when Jon’s at the Wii (which often kickstarts the sturm und drang). Even without this crankiness, Peter probably isn’t the best one to babysit right now as he can’t really run quickly if Jon falls down or such.

Poor Photon ends up being the odd dog out. I’ve missed a couple of her walks (one a day I can handle. Two, forget it.) and she gets a bit whiny because she hasn’t been played with as often as usual. At least when Jon’s at school I can actually get some things done such as chores (both mine and Peter’s), oh, and paying work.

I hope Peter improves quickly. The end of the school year is barrelling towards us scarily fast.

As of 1 pm today Peter was sprung from hospital, yay! CT scan showed no spreading damage, so nothing seems to be getting worse. He’s pretty tired, especially after getting grilled by the occupational therapist (lots of questions, word association puzzles, memory games, etc.—some which I would’ve had trouble with) but now we’re finally home. He’ll need lots of rest for the next week or so, so things don’t change much for me—we’ll be ordering out a lot! 🙂 Also I have to watch him like a hawk over the next few days for any signs of further damage. But Photon is much happier, and Jon will be too.

Thanks for all the visitors today: Grandma, Patti, Dave (actually visited yesterday, but I forgot), Grandpa (thanks for the ride home!), Reid and Andy (thanks for the Timbits!)

No discharge today, and that’s a good thing. He’s still groggy and disoriented, so they’re taking another set of CT scans tomorrow and we’ll see where it goes from there.

Not much change from yesterday: Peter’s still groggy and sleepy, though I’m not sure whether that’s from the concussion or the fact that you just can’t get any sleep overnight in an ER. Finally around 1:30 he was moved up to a room, so it’s muuuch quieter (especially since they charge extra to activate the phone. Boy you get spoiled going to Sick Kids with its free phone!). No idea yet if/when he gets discharged.