When football players get injured, they are medically required to sit the bench until they are officially approved for play by a doctor.

I can imagine that this would be frustrating for those players. However, I find them to be quite fortunate.

Because Mommies do not have this same luxury.

I’m pretty sure that I gave myself two concussions last week.

If I were on a football team, I’d get to be taking it easy right now, sipping on team-color-coordinated Gatorade while flipping channels in the Player’s Lounge.

But since I’m not, I’m not.

When mothers get injured, we are still required to tote children up and down stairs (who apparently fill their pockets with large cubes of cement right before we attempt to pick them up,) receive “loving” bonks to the head from our sons, have the brainpower to answer ridiculously complex questions that have no answer that doesn’t lead to another question, and, when leaving our car, balance seven grocery bags, a moldy sippy cup, an at-risk-of-squirting-out-the-sides dirty diaper, and a kid – in only two arms.

It all started last Sunday night. Chris and I have been slowly working our way through the 90’s television show Northern Exposure. I remembered it as a kid and knew that Chris would love it, and sure enough, it’s a favorite. However, that hasn’t kept us from taking approximately seven years to watch the whole series. Other things get in the way, like Downton Abbey and Project Runway.  You understand.

Anyway. We watched the episode where Maggie O’Connell (the neurotic control freak) finds out about dust mites for the first time – and that she’s allergic to them.  Actually, not to them exactly – she’s allergic to their feces.

“I’m breathing in poo!?”

“We all breathe in poo every day! It’s completely normal!”

She goes off on a manic research and cleaning spree, treating her whole house with dangerous substances that promise to kill dust mites, covering her couch with rubber, and endlessly vacuuming her mattress.

I would like to say the fact that I spontaneously bought us a new mattress the next day was completely unrelated. However, I did go to bed the night before itching like a scabies patient.

I originally set out to buy Ali a mattress, because my years-long guilt about her sleeping on my childhood mattress finally reached a tipping point. But the mattress store was having such a good sale…and delivery would be combined…and our mattress was nearly 12 years old…and the dust mites.

In twenty minutes, I had bought us both mattresses. Both on sale, with extra sale on top of that, and with a Groupon on top of that.

“But honey! Look at all the money I SAVED!!”

So we got two new mattresses with same-day delivery.

(When the delivery guys came, I asked them, “So is it true that used mattresses weigh twice as much as new mattresses due to body soil and dust mites?” They said no, but started looking around for a bottle of Purell.)

I clearly couldn’t take dirty sheets off of our old mattresses and put them back onto our new mattresses, I don’t like our spare sheets, and Ali’s blanket looked filthy…

So I set out a-washing. Frantically. I washed and I washed, and as I headed into the laundry room to change out the laundry, I noticed that the overhead cabinet doors were open.

This would have been a good issue to rectify, but I didn’t. Instead, I reached down into the washer to get the blankets and sheets, bent over to put them in the dryer, and then quickly stood up.

WHAPOP.

The corner of the cabinet door skewered my brain, acting as a spatula flipping my gray matter pancakes.

It was bad.  Bad enough for me to run into the bathroom before I bled all over the good sheets.

(Where I was shocked to find zero blood, so maybe it was slightly less bad than it felt.)

I was dizzy. I was nauseous. I felt pressure in my ears, eyes, and nose.

The pain mostly subsided by the next day, leaving only temporary spells of aches, pressure, and dizziness for the next four days, so I decided that I must be okay.

Until Saturday night.

I had found two pairs of Noah’s socks in Ali’s room, possibly due to a misplacement on my part, but equally possibly due to a hoarding on her part.

(Once, I found two of his pacifiers tucked under her pillow. She claimed she had kept them in case he came in there and needed them, but I have other suspicions…)

I had just laid Noah down for his nap, so I placed the socks in the hallway floor outside of his door.

A couple hours later, at the end of naptime, I headed up to spring him. I saw the socks, so naturally bent down to pick them up.

However, my head injury from earlier in the week had apparently affected the part of my brain that provides the valuable service of depth perception.

When I stood back up, the exact same spot on the top of my head met with the side of the wooden “A” in “NOAH” that hangs on his door in such an impressive manner that it flung his door all the way open.

I nearly died right there, as Noah watched my dramatic entrance with great excitement.

I stumbled to his bed as the dizziness, pressure, and nausea returned in harmony.  After a few minutes, I managed to get him out of the bed, get us both downstairs, and plant myself on the couch until Chris found me and nursed me back to Mostly Dead.

All of Saturday night I worried that I was going to die. Or perhaps fall into a twelve-year coma during the night. I toyed with going to the emergency room, but ER visits never seem to do any good in our family. So I just crossed my fingers and hoped [not] to die.

It’s been nearly a week, and I’m still alive.  So I will assume that’s a good sign.

But I’d still appreciate some doctor’s orders and Gatorade.