Saturday, November 14, 2009

The Dreaded Phone Call.........

It is the phone call every mother dreads............ Mrs. M. you need to come pick up Ciah, she has had a little accident on the play ground. She needs to be taken to the emergency room!! Uh, we go from "little accident" to being told the "emergency room"? No big deal, I inform them I will be right there to pick her up. So I'm driving to the preschool to pick her up thinking they are making a mountain out of a mole hill. When I arrive the preschool director is outside waiting on me, which I thought was odd. She scurried over and gave me a report on how Ciah was doing and what they had done to stablize the arm. I walk in and there she sits, on her teacher's lap. They had taken a disposable rubbermaid lid (the blue see through kind) and had a gallon ziplock bag of ice on top of the lid. They then had a layer of paper towel ontop of the ice, then Ciah's arm on top of the paper towel. They had then taken gauze and wrapped it around the whole get-up. When I walked up to her, I tried to look in to see her arm, but all I could see was her finger tips. I asked her to move her fingers and she did with no problem. So I'm still thinking they are blowing this all out of proportion, that she just sprain it and they were covering their butts and being careful.

So I load her up in the truck thinking about what I'm going to do. On a fluke, I called the doctor's office. I figured I might as well pay the office co-pay opposed to an emergency room co-pay, since it was probably just a sprain. As luck would have it, they had an opening at 1 pm and it was just after noon when I called. In my mind I was timing the drive and hoped that arriving early would allow us to get an x-ray and be seen and that way I could get back in time to pick the boys up from school. We arrive 30 minutes before our appointment time and sure enough, the doctor is eating lunch in her office and they got the verbal orders for us to go ahead and go downstairs for an x-ray. We go back into the x-ray room and they proceed to say we needed to remove her arm from the ice to take the x-ray. So we gently slipped her arm out to find a nice odd angle about 2 inches above her wrist. So I knew from looking at it that is WAS broken, it was just a matter of how bad. Would it require surgery or would they be able to just adjust it and put a cast on it.

I love modern technology, as by the time I got her back up to the doctor's office, they already had the x-ray results upstairs and they were in the process of calling the orthopedist. So the only problem I had now was what to do with our 3 year old. There was no way she would sit still while they were setting Ciah's arm. Thankfully their dad's office is across the street from their peds office. So I was able to drop the 3 year old off with the secretary and John left his job site to go pick her up. One of the nice perks of being part owner is when it is an emergency like this, he was able to also pick up the boys from school.

Once we got to the ortho. office, they decided they would need to set her arm at the same day surgery center down the road. We had to wait until 4 pm for them to set it, as they wanted to "knock her out" and she had a cupcake around 10 am that morning. So by the time we got to the same day surgery center and they got her checked in, clothes changed and arm marked, it was almost 4 pm. They gave her some medication to make her loopy, and when they went to take her back she was a brave little girl and did not even wimper. She just held onto the mask they were going to use and off she went.

Within an hour, I was back with her in the recovery room. Since they knew I was a nurse, they let me go back and sit with her before she woke up. Which was nice as it kept her from crying, which is very normal for kids to do when they come to. The funnniest part was when she noticed her nice green full-arm cast and the look she gave it.

We finally pulled into the driveway at 6 pm that night. Needless to say, we had an early night as there is nothing harder than waiting to get back to your child. Part just to be able to hold them and assure yourself they are alright. The other part is to be able to assure them that you have not disappeared. Are we upset that she broke her arm? No. These things happen. She could have broke it here at home the same as she did at school. It was just one of those fluke things that can happen and did. Although, I would have bet any amount of money it would have been my 8 year old who would have broken a bone. I have always said, it is not a matter of "IF" he breaks a bone, but a matter of "WHEN", as he is so active. I never guessed my 4 year old, quite, little girl would be the first of my children to do so. I just hope she doesn't start a string of events......lol.

Tammy

2 comments:

Marcia @ Pretty Things said...

Oh Tammy, you sound just as brave... I would have been in a bucket of tears.

Bet she is loving her green cast and showing it off to everyone.

Hope your blood pressure has gone down some.

:) Marcia P
SBS4

Deb said...

the kids like to keep us on our toes eh? My 14 yr old broke his little finger at school the other week and yes it is THE dreaded phone call as you never quite know what you are going in to! hope she makes a quick recovery! hugs Debx