A mom can tell....

....the differences in the screams of her children.

Today, we were going to speech therapy for J-man. I was reading some of my bloglines reads and was just logging off to get ready, when the scream erupted from the bedroom. I knew it was Mini-Me. I just assumed she had been bonked by a sibling but I knew she was hurt from the tone of the scream and following cries.

I enter her room to find her lying on Mini-E's bed. The other kids were looking at her cry. First glance told me: No Blood. She was crying and looked at me, "I broke my arm."

I think my chin hit the floor. She said it so matter-of-factly and I wasn't expecting to hear those words come from her mouth. I was expecting a "he hit me" or "so&so did it".

I sit down on the bed and ask her what happened. She was going over the top bunk to the bottom bunk. The bottom bunk is at right angles to the top bunk. The do this all the time, except I don't want them to...because the bottom bunk is Mini-E's bed. They don't want her on their beds, they shouldn't be on hers.

I thought she hit the bed rails we have on the bed for Erica. That was the only thing I could think of that would make her think she'd broken her arm. She said, again matter-of-factly, that she did not hit the bed rails.

She's not entirely sure what she did. All she knew was that her jump ended up being a fall.

My mom was on her way to the house, anyway, to watch the kids for speech therapy time. So we waited. We put ice on the elbow. We laid hand son the elbow and prayed. We propped it up.

I called The Professor. He concurred that an x-ray needed to be done. Just in case. So I called up our pediatrician. Do they want me to come to them or the "Doc-in-a-box" (aka urgent care center).
They want us to head to a radiology lab.

Mini-Me says, "Can you pray over it some more? It really hurts."

So when Grammas arrives, we break the news that our plans have changed. We get shoes on. Mini-Me is afraid that she'll hurt her arm and we show her how to move without hurting it. And off we go. The tears have stopped - but she won't move her arm.

The radiology lab tells us that they'll get us back as soon as possible but the machine was down and it might take an hour.

Great.
I think my very short prayer consisted of: "God?" In a "can you fix this?" kind of way.0

It didn't take an hour. More like 20 minutes.
The x-ray tech was VERY nice. she saved us about 5 x-rays by the way she took the first two.

Then she showed Mini-Me the x-rays because she wanted to know. The x-rays were digital and we got to see thm right away. I could tell there was no OBVIOUS break which made me happy. So we head home to await the doctor's phone call.

Picking up McD's for lunch for the kids and Subway for mom and me.

We have lunch. At this point, I'm tired of watching Mini-Me hold her right arm with her left arm. So I get her a pretty red scarf and tie it like a sling for her.

I ask her if she wants a bow in the front. She replied: "I want my pretty necklace to show."
She's such a girl.

About 2 o'clock and I'm getting impatient. I know the doctor returned from lunch about 1:30. So i call a bit after 2pm. I call the nurse's line and leave a message. 10 minutes later, I call the front desk to see if they can help expedite things. A good thing I did, too. The nurse had to go home due to a death in the family.

The receptionist told me that the x-rays had come through because she'd looked at them. She said that there weren't any breaks that she saw, but she did see an injury at the elbow. She'll get the word from the doctor and call me back.

The other nurse (someone I like better than the first nurse, anyway) tells me that it's an effusion. Which I looked up, and pretty much it means that there's water in the joint.
I guess.
That's what it means in theory. I'm still not sure what it means to me.
They want her to see an orthepedic specialist. The orthopedic specialist , the designated elbow guy, was booked for wednesday but could see us Thursday.

While not optimal, I will take what I can get. What do I do in the meantime.
Keep it elevated. Put ice on it. And don't let her get into a situation where it gets bumped a lot.

hmm..think I. I say, "You've met my boys..."
She plays along and says, "Yeah..I thought about that..." and we both laugh.
So we'll not be swimming until we hear from the Elbow Doctor.

Here she sits, elevated and iced:




She's still very pale from her morning injury. I tried to get her to straighten it (this was before I talked to the doctor). I wanted to see what range of motion she had. I was trying to figure out how immobile I needed to make her elbow. Her arm straightened out to a certain place and then stopped and she started leaning her body instead.

We'll be wearing the sling until Thursday.

I called The Professor and asked if he'd be able to take off work Thursday morning. I didn't dare ask mom again, she'd already been up twice. He said, casually, "Sure. I should be able to do that. My training was postponed."

I"d forgotten about the training - but how nice of God to rearrange things for me.

While, I'd really rather He have healed Mini-Me completely, I'll take these kisses from today.
It's not broken.
The x-ray worked
We got an appointment on Thursday when the Professor could take off work.

She's wondering how things are going to work for her until the elbow heals.
How will I sleep? (With your eyes closed.)
What about church? They said they'd play games. (Let's deal with that AFTER we see the Elbow doctor)
Hey mom!! I can hold a playstation controller!! (Yay!)

It's the small things.