Raccoon Eye Scare

After the One Hump Bump of Saturday (see the One Hump Bump post), we monitored Noah for 48 hours.  He was completely normal during that time. Yesterday evening, four days after he bumped his head, he started acting more cranky than normal and a bit clingy. He would not even go in the water during his swim class and then fussed when I tried to give him his shower. I figured he was just a bit tired or having a cranky moment. Then just before putting him to bed, we noticed that he had black bruising on the side of his eyes by the bridge of his nose.

We put him to bed and then quickly went on the internet and called the doctors in our family. Raccoon eye, as it is called, can be a sign of a fractured skull! Even though we doubted there was anything serious wrong, we decided not to take the risk (given his behavior and the raccoon eyes).  So we transferred Noah to his stroller and wheeled him asleep over to the doc across the street (open till midnight on a Saturday!). The doc saw him within 20min, looked at the raccoon eyes, checked his eye responsiveness and asked us many questions. Noah kept snoozing through all of this! The upshot was that we did not need to take him to the ER that night to get scans: raccoon eyes can happen even without a fracture, as the additional blood from a bump to the forehead can seep down and cause raccoon eyes. We are  of course continuing to monitor him for other symptoms.

We brought Noah home and transferred him back to his bed where he kept on sleeping! Today he has been completely normal (except for the raccoon eyes which seem to get better after a night of sleep or a nap and worse at the end of the day). Hopefully this will be the last post on the One Hump Bump.