As many of you know we went down to the coast this weekend for some fellowship and flat hunting. The time with friends was really great although we did have a scare. I took Yvonne and some friends up to a dive shop that I use regularly. We also had Landon and Josiah with us since Yvonne was going to do a “discover scuba diving” deal to see if she was interested in getting certified.
While we were filling out paperwork, we heard a thud and our worst nightmares were confirmed when we heard screaming from below. I ran to the ledge and saw someone picking up Josiah after he had taken a 10 ft. plunge. Somehow he walked, ran, jumped... we don’t know... off of a 10-foot ledge to the staging area below where you get ready to go out on your dive. There was a railing there, but it was right up there with most Arab specifications and the slats were about 18” apart. There was a bench in front of most of that ledge but somehow our boy found that money spot that was dangerous. There was a van below about to be loaded up, an old school van where the front is nearly flat and the engine is behind the front seats. Well, Josiah hit the van’s windshield on the way down on the back of his head and his shoulder! This windshield is at a very steep angle so he didn’t crash down super hard on it, but rather he careened off of it. When he hit the windshield it flipped him over so that he landed on his rear end!
It was no surprise when Josiah wailed for a while. Meanwhile we were checking all his bones, and his head and feeling all over his body trying to find any obvious injuries. There weren’t any... and he stopped crying after 10 minutes. He was pretty needy still and didn’t want to leave either of us... but after an hour I asked him if he wanted to swim with me in the pool. His eyes lit up and he smiled and exclaimed, “yeah!” He seemed to be back to normal. We hooked up with some new friends in town to look for flat, and the wife is a pediatrician. She checked him out a few times while we were down there. We also spoke to a doctor friend of ours up in the capital city who contacted his pediatrician here in town. Everyone was in agreement that we should high-tail it back home and have him get some X-rays and a CT scan. Although there were no visible problems with Jo, he never lost consciousness, never vomited and his eyes dilated equally and appropriately, if there was a slow bleed on the brain it could take a few days for it to build up to a dangerous point and then it would go downhill very fast.
So hightail it we did and arranged for a friend to watch Landon and Kenzy while Yvonne and I went to the hospital with Jo. The unfortunate part of the CT scan is that it would require general anesthesia because most 2 year-olds can’t stay still enough for the procedure. They gave him some sleepy-time medicine, but little dude was not affected. He got sleepy for about 20 minutes and then he got hyper! So in the end we had to teach him how to “freeze!” and I went in with him, wearing a lead apron, and held his head still for the scan. About one minute later it was done, 10 minutes later the film was developed and another 15 minutes later the doctor came, reviewed the films and told us that there is absolutely nothing wrong with him!
We believe with all our hearts that God did a miracle with our little boy! There is no way he would have come out of this unscathed like he did without a miracle.