Jul 16, 2015 4 min read

The question loomed over day three of our beach vacation like a dark rain cloud.

Should we take my daughter to the emergency room?

If it were a broken arm, or a bad cut, there would be no question about it. But this was something less obvious.

The day before, while on a theme park ride, Grace hit her head on the hard metal sides of her seat. The ride went upside down and then whipped sideways, and Grace’s head went along for the ride.

The headache started that night. I gave her a couple of Motrin and put her to bed. The next morning, she seemed like a different kid: tired and pale and unable to walk outside without squinting at the light. I sneezed and she jumped out of her chair. And the most telling? At dinner, she hardly touched her meal and then refused cheesecake for dessert. And this kid never refuses cheesecake.

There’s that moment on vacation when you know that if you were at home, a trip to the doctor would be in order: maybe a 20 minute ride and a short wait before getting the all-clear sign that it’s nothing serious.

But when you’re away from home, the stakes are higher and the worry is heavier. Should she be in this much pain? Just how hard did she bang her head, anyway?

But then you think about what it takes to find a doctor while on an island. Where’s the closest emergency room? How long will we wait to be seen? And, though it sounds awful to say, your mind can’t help but turn to the practical: Are we overreacting? Are we going to sit in a waiting room all night for something that turns out to be just a bump and a headache?

By 7:30 that night, Grace started holding the sides of her head, and wincing. We headed off the island to the nearest city hospital.

“She might have a concussion,” I told the nurse who greeted us.

Two years ago, I produced and wrote a documentary about concussions in high school sports. For three months, I read about concussions, researched the latest treatments, spoke to the leading experts on the subject. I knew the symptoms, and Grace had them all: nausea, sensitivity to light and sound, irritability, fatigue and headache. Oh lord, the headache.

Grace sat in a wheelchair in the waiting room, her head in her hands, for two hours. Each time the automatic metal doors to the treatment hallway opened with a screech, she covered her ears and cringed.

Two more hours and a CAT scan later (to rule out bleeding), we had our diagnosis – a mild concussion. The doctor prescribed Motrin or Tylenol, lots of rest.

Many years ago, at a nearby beach, I was with a friend who got a fishing hook so completely embedded in the flesh of his palm that only the metal loop was sticking out. As I drove him to the emergency room, I was picturing surgery to remove that hook. My friend walked out of the treatment room 10 minutes later, the hook freed and nothing but a tiny hole in his hand. He said the doctor had a jar of fishing hooks he’d removed from people (apparently by threading a needle along the path of entry).

Every one of those hooks represented the worst kind of vacation hell, a weird moment of bad luck that launches a few hours of worry and pain – and necessitates a drive off the island and into the real world.

“No more rides for awhile,” the doctor said as he released us from the ER. By the time we got back to the island it was way after midnight. Vacation would resume the next morning, at a slower pace.