Crunch

Dear Ian,

Well, there has to be a first time for everything, Little Bear, and since this blog/book has turned into 
basically a record of all of your developments, comings and goings and whatnot, here's a doozy of an entry.

Yesterday, January 16th at 5:30 in the evening, you broke yourself.  Your left radius (that's an arm bone) anyway. 

We had decided earlier that day to meet up at Winthrop Park with our friends Katherine and Julia and then have dinner at Red Elephant, and you were super excited about going.  Things were going great, too!  We had been at the park about an hour, and decided at 5:25 that we would leave in five minutes to go to dinner to beat the rush.  And in that last five minutes, you broke yourself.  You were hanging from the "slider bar" monkey bars, trying to move the sliders, when you dropped and landed funky on your wrist.  The sound you made when you hit the ground and realized you were hurt had me running.  Normally you drop from that thing with barely a grunt.  This time you screamed.  Then you hopped up and yelled, "I don't think I broke a bone, but how am I going to bowl?!"  Had you not been in pain, that probably would have been funny; you were so concerned about bowling.  Anyhoo.  You arm didn't look any different, and you said it didn't hurt when I moved it around, so we decided to try to go to dinner and get an ice pack and see how you felt in a couple of minutes.  You were still a little weepy, but in fairness to Mommy, you hadn't had a nap/rest that day, which causes you to be a smidge on the dramatic side, and you fell in front of a friend, so you were a little embarrassed.  I wasn't sure if the crying was from pain or another factor, and you said you wanted to eat, so we tried.  Right after ordering, though, you decided that you needed to go see a doctor.  Yes, you read that right. You said you needed to go.  You're not one to volunteer for that sort of thing, so I knew...  We got our food to go, because I knew we were probably in for a wait and you were going to be starving, and off we went. 

Tallahassee has a new swanky Emergency Room right near our house, so we didn't have to go far;  it is right between home and Red Elephant, so that's where we ended up.  We got in a room pretty quickly, and you read on the info board in the room that your nurse's name was Karen!  That sorta perked you up.  She even brought you a little stuffed tiger to snuggle, and that made you happy, too.  But then it was time to head to radiology.  The radiology tech was AWESOME.  She talked you through the whole thing, even the parts where, since she had to move your arm, it hurt you.  At one point, she even called in another tech so she could hold your hand while she got the picture, so her fingers were in it, too.  Mommy was stuck behind a glass wall listening to you cry.  At one point, when she turned your arm, you screamed again, and it was all I could do not to jump through the glass wall.  In any case, the she was great, and they got the five x-rays they needed pretty quickly.  The images were digital, so they popped up on the screen right next to me.  I could see it; you fractured your left radius.  I didn't even need it to be pointed out.  There it was.  Sigh.  The picture to the right isn't your arm; I found this one on the internet, but yours looks pretty much identical.  This x-ray is the right arm of a five year old child with a fractured radius.  So just flip this to make it left handed, and there ya go.  See the crack?  Your x-ray looks JUST like this one.  The internet is amazing, by the way. 

So, the PA and nurse came back in after that, and they wrapped you all up in a temporary cast.  They called it a splint, but when I think of a splint, I think of something a little less substantive.  This thing on your arm is impressive for being temporary.  They put a stocking on your arm, then wrapped you in something like cotton batting and then put this thing on that actually hardened around your arm before they wrapped it in ace bandages.  It's solid.  And HUGE!  Getting you in jammies and shirts is proving to be a bit of a challenge.  Anyhoo.  During all of this chaos, you got to talk to your Daddy, who was in Amsterdam at the time, and he suggested we go get ice cream after all this was said and done. 

And boy did you get ice cream.  We went to Lofty Pursuits, and they have this awesome thing called a nano-cone flight.  Their nano-cones are small, so it ended up being about the equivalent of two normal sized scoops, but you were thrilled with it.  You got mango sorbet (your favorite), raspberry sorbet, lime sherbert and one school of dark chocolate as a concession to me.  I told you that calcium helps bones, so you judiciously chose chocolate ice cream since it was made out of milk and therefore had calcium.  I swear to goodness, the way your brain works cracks me up. 

You with one of your mango scoops.  You got a flight of five nano cones, so you chose two of them to be mango sorbet. 

The last three scoops of the flight

By the time we finally got you to bed that night, it was after 10pm, and after a good dose of Tylenol, you conked right out.  After, of course, you made me sign your cast.  

So that was the major drama from Friday.  Today was hard, but in a different way: you have just been so down.  It's almost like you're depressed over this whole thing, which - and this may make me sound limited - but I didn't think littles like you could be depressed.  All you wanted to do was hang in your jammies and watch TV.  We did end up going to your friend Jack's birthday party (your idea), but really, you just seemed bummed.  And I can understand why.  You can't do the things you love.  You ordinarily spend about 45 minutes after you wake up in the morning playing Legos in your room.  Your cast severely limits your pincher grip, so working those little pieces is pretty much out.  Same thing goes with your K'nex, which you also love.  And bowling, and bike riding and rough and tumbling around.  It's so weird to see you this still and sad.  You didn't even want to listen to your favorite songs on the radio.  You ask frequently how long you have to be in the cast, and I think you've told me about 20 times today that you hate it.  I'm getting pretty good at reaching itches you have under it, too.  And I wish I could just take all this away from you, because I hate to see you unhappy and hurting.

You and your bread loaf arm

You occasionally show a glimmer of your typical self, though.  At the party, you and Sarah and a couple of your other friends played a bit, and it was good to see you smile.  And you laughed at something funny on one of your television shows you watched today.  But my favorite was a joke you cracked at bath time.  I broke my arm when I was about your age, and I remembered my mom bagging my arm in a bread bag to keep it dry.  I used up the last of the bread this morning making you French Toast for this exact purpose, and tonight when I bagged you up and put you in the tub, you looked up at me and asked, "Is this the first time you've ever given a bath to a loaf of bread?"  It was so unexpected and funny that I laughed really hard.  Even you giggled a little.  Your arm really did look like bread.  

So we're on night number two, and I have a feeling we have about 30 more of these before we're all said and done.  I am hoping to get you in to see the Orthopedist for your real cast and a time frame on Monday, but Monday is a holiday, so I'm not sure how that's going to go.  We have all of our fingers and toes crossed.  Well, the fingers that aren't stuck in a cast, anyway.

I feel so badly about all of this.  It's sort of surreal; my baby got hurt, and there isn't much I can do to make it right or better.  That part is killing me.  And on top of it, you're blaming yourself.  You keep saying over and over that you wished you had listened to me and just stayed on the ground.  I have been reminding you that I broke my arm, Daddy broke his arm (on monkey bars, no less) and even Grandma Brooks broke her arm tripping and falling.  Accidents happen, but I just wish this accident hadn't happened to my boy. 

We will get through it.  It may not be fun, and it may get ugly, but I know you'll come through ok.  We all will.  Even me and the hair that you've made even more white with all of this drama.  You've been so brave and grown up.  We'll get through it.  With lots of hugs, love and milk for strong bones.

I love you,

Mommy