Friday, July 10, 2009

Friday night

Friday nights... Friends, fellowship, tacos, trip to ER. Wait! Trip to ER??
Yes, that's the way we prepared for Sabbath this week.
We were invited to a friends house for tacos. I was just preparing to slip a pan of homemade brownies into the oven, while Abrianna peered through the oven door from a two- stepped step. Suddenly.... a thump followed by a loud wail- an "I'm really hurt " type of wail.
"Kyle, I gotta go!" I blurted, slamming the phone shut and swooping my wailing baby off of the floor.
Due to the poor connection, he called right back thinking that we'd been disconnected. Nope! I told him I had to go again and hung up.

She was pasty and taking turns holding her left arm with her right hand and moving her left arm around like it wasn't comfortable. What to do? Call Rick to have a look. Emerging from the computer room, he poked it and firmly declared it just fine. After all, broken bones would cause loud hysterical crying.
I wasn't convinced. My little brother broke his leg at about the same age and the way she was acting reminded me of that.
So, I called Dr. Wren at home. He wasn't there yet. Cheryl offered to page him for me. During the interim, I did some assessing. Her elbow was fine.The wrist moved okay. But she was guarding it. When laid down, she used her hands to try to push herself up, this brought a fresh onslaught of tears and cradling of her wrist.
Okay, we're going to go to ER! "Please tell Dr. Wren that I decided to take her in!" I called to Rick as I started to gathering things and heading for the door.
The phone rang. Yes, I should take her in to the ER, agreed Dr. Wren on the phone.
Setting the booster next to the Yaris, I loaded Abrianna into the van and headed to the hospital.
She had long since ceased to cry.
Sheepishly standing in line at the emergency room with an apparently normal 14 month old, I wondered if I'd made the right call. Oh well, better to be safe than sorry, right?
Maybe 20 minutes after arrival Dr. Underhill came into the room. Asking several questions, including whether she'd had any Tylenol, he ordered x-rays. Thinking for a few minutes, I realized she had had Tylenol an hour and a half prior to her fall. In retrospect,I believe this was helping mask the pain.
Abrianna had been happily toddling about to this point. This changed when we made our way into the x-ray room with the tech. Setting her on the table, she reacted by flipping out, totally losing all control, frantically clutching at me, while crying hysterically.
We did the x-rays with her sitting on my lap and me holding her arm still. We had to do two sets because her bones are so thick! ( yeah for the Anderson blood!)
The x-ray tech couldn't tell me the results as it's "out of his scope of practise" but let me look. I thought I saw a line. The tech told me that I had good eyes but that Dr. Underhill would give me the results.
Sure enough, "Good job, mom!" was what the Dr. said. There were two green stick fractures, one on the radius and the other on the ulna, thankfully below the growth plate.
For now she has a splint and an ace bandage.
We're going to make an appointment with Dr. Hudson, an orthopedist in town, on Monday.
We'll see what happens with a real cast.
I talked to Lucas very sternly about not touching or pulling on either arm. He's listened very well and we've avoided further injury thus far.
I'll try to get some pictures tomorrow. She's peacefully sleeping now.
Happy Sabbath.

3 comments:

Shana said...

So sorry for the poor little girl. Levi flipped out when he got x-rays too.

Anonymous said...

Poor little girl. Poor little mama! What a night!
Good for you to go with your mommy instincts rather than Daddy's..ac

Leilani said...

Poor baby! ER trips and hysterical babies are so scary and wrenching! I'm so glad you went in right away...