Late at night, I sat blogging at my computer when I heard a “Bam!” followed by my three-year-old screaming. I dashed in there to find him standing in the middle of his room, a huge goose-egg growing on his cheekbone just under his left eye. He wouldn’t let me put any ice on it—he just cried and hung onto me until I was able to get him back to sleep.
The next morning he had an outrageous black eye, and the coloration didn’t go away for about two weeks. At that time, I noticed he still had a little lump under his eye, and when I touched it, it felt hard. It was also painful for him – he started to cry and held on to his face for a good hour afterward, even though I had tried to touch him gently.
I called my doctor, who said to bring him right in.
He did a brief examination, and told me we were looking at three possibilities.
1. My son could have a blow-out fracture, meaning that his cheekbone had received an impact from the front which crushed it inward. When an injury of this type happens, the eye can sink down into the head, necessitating surgery, where a metal plate is inserted to rebuild the face and bring the eye back up where it needs to be. Because I was not present when he hit his face and am clueless how he hit it, we didn’t know what angle the blow took, and this was a possibility. (My best guess is that he was sleepwalking and ran into his dresser.)
2. My son could have a chip fracture, meaning that the blow could have come at an angle and chipped off a fragment of the cheekbone, which would be the hard spot I felt when I touched him.
3. The hard spot could be tissue damage, and everything would be all right as the hard spot would eventually reassimulate.
I was told to go over to the adjoining hospital and have my son’s face x-rayed. That was an adventure – he didn’t quite “get” the whole procedure and didn’t want to hold still. I plied him with candy purchased just for that contingency. We were able to get the series of facial x-rays, and by the end of the day got the call we’d been waiting for – it was just tissue damage. His cheekbone was not broken or cracked.
This was such welcome news. It’s hard to think about your little three-year-old having to go through surgery. I’m also glad to learn about these different types of facial traumas – as the mother of three boys, I imagine this information will come in very handy as the years go by.
Related Blogs:
Preventing Unintentional Childhood Injuries