Michael and the Broken Arm

A lady in our ward has been giving the boys swimming lessons at her neighborhood pool. Last week Ethan, Michael and I were playing at the park next to the pool while Parker had his lesson. Michael was on the play equipment but wasn't doing too  much so I left checked on Ethan really quick who was at the swings and out of my sight. I turned around to walk back to Michael just in time to see him put his knee up on the railing by the bridge trying to pull himself up and fall right through it. He fell head first from 5 feet up. I was mostly worried about a concussion. He was having a hard time calming down so I tried and tried to get a hold of Dan at work. He started to calm down but was very clingy and not really using his right arm. He would try to use it occasionally but you could tell something was off. He wouldn't put any pressure on it and kept holding it so I started to worry it was broken. I talked to Dan and decided to observe him while we waited for Parker and then we headed off to an Urgent Care facility. Before checking in I asked if they would even be able to help. They said they could do x-rays but could not put on a cast. And then they decided they wouldn't even x-ray him because he is so young. Considering I had all 3 kids I didn't want to waste my time so we headed out to the car. Dan called as we were loading up and was on his way home. Yay! A few weeks ago we went to Tennessee to visit with family and my niece, Adalee, and sprained her foot. They had taken her in and wasted a lot of time for them to say they couldn't do anything. I didn't want to go through that and spend a lot of money on co-pays so I decided to observe him until Dan got home and then we would decide what to do. He was doing pretty good and using his right arm a little but would not put pressure on it. By this time he had a pretty good bump right above his wrist so we ate some dinner and headed to the Emergency Department. We got there at about 7pm. They said every room was full in the pediatric wing so we would have to wait until things opened up. Michael did pretty good during the 2 hours we waited to go back. But as soon as people started coming in to look at his arm he was losing it. Not to mention that since it is a teaching hospital you get many many visitors (nurse, medical student, pediatric resident, attending, different nurse, orthopedic medical student, orthopedic resident, another nurse). And x-rays... forget it. Two of us had to hold him down and it still took several tries to get good images. After all of that he fell asleep. Both bones in his forearm were broken. They put on a cast and finally by 1am we were out of there! It took him a while to get used to his cast and start using his arm again, but now you would never know it is broken if it weren't for the obvious cast. He gets stuff stuck inside of it a lot and it is pretty dirty but he is managing well. He is a climber and this hasn't slowed him down so I am sure this is only the beginning. Oh joy!

Love that happy face!