A First Time For Everything

We made it almost 4.5 years before our first visit to children’s urgent care, so despite the fact that Josuha has a broken bone, I’d say we’ve done okay, right?

Joshua’s first broken bone comes courtesy of a fall from the swing. While it wasn’t moving.

He was sitting there waiting to be pushed and then he wasn’t sitting there any more and instead was on the ground. At first we thought he’d just taken a harder than usual but not too hard fall and the fact that he was overtired (because he thinks 5:00 a.m. is a great time to start the day) was contributing to his tears.

When he still wouldn’t move his arm an hour and a half later, we decided to take him to the children’s urgent care to have him checked out.

Sidenote: I’m so, so incredibly thankful that we live in a place where there are children’s urgent care clinics with extended hours. Taking your sick or injured child to a place where the people are trained and choose to work specifically with children makes the entire process so much easier. Thanks for existing, CHOA.

Joshua was super concerned that people would touch his arm and did not at all want that to happen. I tried to explain to him that the doctor would help make it better and drew on every episode of anything remotely relevant to help explain to him what was going to happen. Yo Gabba Gabba, Doc McStuffins, and Bubble Guppies sprang immediately to mind, but when I started singing “There’s a bunch of bones inside me” I was issued a firm “Mama! No singing!”

What the broken kid wants, the broken kid gets. So I stopped singing.

We were seen almost immediately, which I didn’t think would be the case. I expected we’d wait there for quite a while, but before we had even gotten settled in the exam room, the x-ray technician came to get us.

Joshua was really reluctant to have his arm x-rayed because that meant moving it, but he was such a little trooper. After we got suited up in our lead aprons, I had him take a deep breath and then 1-2-3 we moved his arm to the table. He didn’t really cry at all from that point on, at least until the doctor came to look at it.

The whole time I had been thinking this was nursemaid’s elbow, something he’s had once before. The doctor pushed and poked and gently squeezed his arm and then he let out a yelp and she quit and said she thought it was broken but needed to examine the films.

As it turns out, he landed in just the right way to break the radial head right near his elbow. It’s a slight fracture and doesn’t look TOO major, but we’ll follow up with an orthopedist at the end of this week.

After they got him splinted, I asked if she would show him his x-rays so that he could see and sort of understand that the owie is inside his skin where he can’t see it so that he would better understand why he can’t use his arm or move it, so she showed us and then got him a popsicle.

Turns out that when you’re 4, popsicles are way more awesome than pictures of your own bones.

We got home and he ran in to show Dan his splint and sling and then asked for Goldfish and milk and went to sleep. He woke up this morning and climbed in bed next to me and said “Mama, I can’t even pull my pants down to go pee!”

And so begins our new adventure of maneuvering life with a cast in the way. So far this includes lots of snuggles, movies, and yes, more popsicles.