It Always Hurts Worse the Next Day...

Lola woke up yesterday with a bit of pain in her neck. She was able to move everything all right, but seemed a little stiff, so I gave her an Advil and dropped her off at school. I asked her to call me later in the day to let me know how she was feeling.

About 2:30 I received a phone call at work. Lola was on the other end. “Mom, I hurt so badly I cannot sit in class. Will you come get me?”

We got her home a bit later and put her in the bed with a heating pad and another Advil. She was hurting quite a bit, but seemed to relax a little as the evening progressed. She fell asleep, but was quite restless most of the night.

This morning she woke up and literally could not sit up in bed without help. We got her up and downstairs for breakfast, but she said she hurt so much she was not hungry at all. Not only did the neck hurt, but she had a whopper of a headache and her ribs on the left side were very sore and tender to the touch. It suddenly dawned on me that her pain was a result of her taking those few penguin dives on the ice Sunday. I decided to take the day off work (this is the fourth day of vacation I have used for illness/injury/car repairs rather than that for which it is intended - - yes, I know - - welcome to motherhood) to get her to the doctor to make sure she didn’t have any fractured ribs/vertebrae, etc. I managed to get a doctor appointment for her at 10:30am and we finally left the doctor’s after the exam and x-rays at about 1:30. I was hoping perhaps to go to work for at least four hours, but since Chris wasn’t available to stay with her I took the whole day off. They called me later from the doctor’s office to tell me that Lola didn’t have any breaks or fractures, thankfully, but she did strain her neck (much like whiplash) and she needed to stay out of PE class (luckily there is no PE this semester) and no horseback riding or skating for at least a week or until her neck is recovered.

I set her up for a therapeutic massage session which may hopefully help her recover more easily by relaxing those muscles…I set one up for myself as well!