What a day I had yesterday. It started early, as Kyra had school. I had not been home long at all from taking her, when the phone rang, and my mom told me that my Papaw J had been admitted to the hospital. She said that my mamaw had called and told her that they called her and said that his blood pressure got to high for them to do the knee surgery he had went to have and that he had a stroke. I immediately took the boys to Chris’ mom’s, and rushed to the hospital. I was the first one there, since I live in the same town as the hospital. I found Papaw’s room, and found him lying in bed watching t.v. I asked how he was, and he told me he was fine. He said that his blood pressure just got too high for them to operate. Come to find out, they didn’t say that he had a stroke, but that his blood pressure was so dangerously high that it could cause a stroke if it didn’t come down. Oh, what a relief.

Then, last night after church, Elijah was running around, playing with his little friend, Destiny, when he ran smack into the corner of a wall. He was running full-force, hit the wall with his head, and it knocked him on his butt. He was immediately squalling. Elijah doesn’t cry much when he gets hurt. He is tough as nails. He fell on a drinking glass the other day, and busted it. I asked him if he was hurt, and he said no. I started cleaning up the glass when he said he was okay, and looked up after a minute to see blood running down his leg. He had cut his knee in four places. The worst of which bled for at least two or three minutes before I could get it to stop. He repeatedly insisted that he wasn’t hurt. Kyra shut his hand in the door of the van one time….completely shut and latched it….and he cried half-heartedly for about thirty seconds. Do you see my point? This kid is tough Back to my story…he stood up, immediately crying hard, and, as I was rushing to the front of the church, he turned around with a big blue spot on his forehead. I picked him up, and took him back to our pew. I sat down with him in my lap, and looked at it. It had started to turn purple, and was swelling up. Someone went out to the school to get some ice for it, and I touched it. It wasn’t a hard bump, but it was soft and mushy under it. That worried me. I had no experience with that, and didn’t know if it was bad thing or a good thing. Elijah physically fought us over the ice, and we eventually gave up. Everyone seemed to think that I should take him to the ER to get checked out, just to be on the safe side. Mom took the kids home for me, and I took Elijah straight to the ER. He wouldn’t talk to me on the way, and told me that he felt sick. Once we got there, he still wouldn’t talk, and just kind of stared into space for about thirty minutes. He even let them weigh him and take his temperature and pulse without any trouble. That is weird. He usually starts all out crying when I take him to the doctor, and refuses to let them do any of those things. Chris showed up after a while, and, once he was there, Elijah started to perk up a little bit. By the time we got seen by the NP, Elijah was his normal self again. She told us that he didn’t seem like he had a concussion, but, after she consulted with the doctor, he wanted him to have a CAT scan, since he is so young, just to be sure he was okay. Elijah was not a willing participant in that process. I had tried to talk it up beforehand, telling him that it was a Superman machine that had x-ray vision and could look inside his head, just like Superman does. He was pretty chill until it got down to it, and then he screamed and cried and fought us for all he was worth. Chris had to hold down his upper body, while I held down his legs. It didn’t last long, but Elijah said it was very scary. That came back fine. They said he had an acute cranial hematoma, which basically meant he had blood pooled under his skin, but that his brain and skull were fine. So, after an extremely long time at the ER, we came home, watched American Idol, and went to bed.

Click here to see the statement Elijah wished to release to his loving fans.