He'll Always Be My Baby

I shared our recent life update and hoped to get back on track with catching up on the blog...

Well, y'all know how that goes.
Life happens.

Our weekend went from pretty uneventful to a marked-in-time event.

Saturday was a very laid back day. We were all worn out from the back to school week and basically just hung out at home all day.  Later that evening, Andrew, Lily and I headed to McD's for an ice cream cone. I think Andrew was secretly bummed he missed out on Friday night when Lily and I went and he was at the football game since it was his suggestion. :)

After we came home, Lily wanted to play outside on her atv and Andrew wanted to ride his bike. Too bad his tire was flat. He then decided to ride his scooter. Off he went around the circle we live on.  Not too long later he called me to come get him, said he fell and couldn't get up. He told me where he was in relation to the house and I loaded Lily in the car to get him.

We came up to him and he couldn't lift his right arm up without using the other arm to hold it up.  He was pretty upset and I was beginning to really worry.  We got home and got some ice on it right away to see what happened with the swelling to determine whether we headed to urgent care that night (it was 8:15pm) or wait until the morning. 

For lack of a better description, his wrist was pretty floppy. His hand just kind of hung here and was pretty painful, so we thought he had broken it.  Off we went to urgent care where they xrayed it and confirmed it was broken.  The doctor came back into the room before Andrew had returned from xray and said, "He's got a pretty significant break in his wrist. He broke both bones."  I immediately started crying then.  {Crying now again, as I type this}I feel so terrible for him and I'm sad he was in so much pain all the while apologizing to me how sorry he was that he did this. :(  He's such a considerate person and I just hate this for him.

He had to hold it up otherwise his hand just hung.

Kinda hard to tell in pictures how swollen it was and out of whack, but he's holding his arm straight.

Urgent care sent us to Children's Hospital to see an orthopedic doctor to have his wrist/arm looked at to determine how to best care for it.  We arrived at the emergency room around 9:45pm Saturday night and didn't get home until 9:30am, Sunday morning!

waiting in ER with his arm splinted from urgent care (which helped some)

This was our first visit to Children's Hospital and apparently everyone else in Pittsburgh decided to join.  There were 6 kids with fractures there, one nurse to do the sedation before casting --each sedation takes a minimum of 30 minutes to an hour, and one orthopedic doctor available for all of that.  We were 3rd in line.   Add to it, the billion other kids who needed to be screened, seen, called back, and different xrays done. It made for a very long, long night.  They actually had to re-do his xrays that we had brought from urgent care because something was wrong with their computer system and they couldn't get the xrays uploaded. Seriously, our luck. 

George was working when all this began.  After we left urgent care, I let him know were on our way to Children's and he left work to help with Lily and check on Andrew and me. Thank God considering how long we ended up being there and it was way past her bedtime to start with.

Andrew is seriously a trooper. He was given some ibuprofen at urgent care, I had given him some Tylenol before we left the house and he was still debating on whether he needed pain medicine when the nurse asked him some time in the ER.  Finally, he decided he needed something since we had no idea how long we'd be there.  They gave him morphine and he immediately looked at me and said, "I feel weird."

The staff was great! We actually saw 3 different doctors not including the orthopedic and 3 different nurses during the time we were there due to shifts changing. 

When the ortho came into talk with us after seeing the xrays, he said that Andrew's fracture was a very common type, as he was trying to brace his fall.  50% of the time, they're able to sedate, reset and cast in the room and the other 50% of the time, they'd have to go to the OR for deeper sedation to complete it.  I asked if he felt optimistic about Andrew's being able to be completed in the room and he said yes, he did.  So, there's that.

Around 4:30am, the orthopedic came in and said it would be about 15-30 minutes and then it would be Andrew's turn to get sedated and his arm reset and cast.  It actually was around 6am when it started.  They let me stay until he was out and then I left while they reset and cast his arm.{I wasn't allowed to stay in the room}  It took about 50 minutes which was longer than they had hoped, but apparently they'd had a trouble getting it stay when they'd set it.  The bones kept popping out of place and finally the last time, it stayed.  Thank God!!! 

When I came back in, Andrew was still out, but starting to come to. His eyes were really wide when he looked at me and said in his mimicking Lily voice, "Helloooooo Mummy."  It made me laugh.  Immediately his eyes closed again and he nodded off and on until he finally said, "Am I going to turn into Captain America?"  I couldn't help but crack up and told him no, he wasn't today.  This kid has loved superheroes since he was 2 years old!

This is what he looked like when I came back after casting.

Ultimately, it was an exhausting night primarily just because of the duration of time and the fact that he was starving and so thirsty and couldn't have anything. We both just wanted to go home and sleep.  For the record, the chairs in the rooms are not advantageous for a woman who is 33 weeks pregnant.  I'm glad he had gotten some sleep throughout the night. The rest of the time we watched the end of an Indiana Jones movie, one of the Pirates of the Caribbeans, and the news.

He had picked red for his cast because it's a school color and you know, in marching band where he plays the saxophone...that he now cannot hold. :(  

Finally we were discharged around 9 something a.m. When we got home, Andrew went to bed and slept until 5:15pm.  He only woke long enough for me to give him ibuprofen in the middle of the afternoon.

Today starts a whole new adventure with him having to figure out school with his non-dominant hand.  I hoping he had a good day!

In the scheme of things, a broken wrist and gimpy fin for 6 to 8 weeks isn't that big of deal. He's healthy and functional and I'm trying to keep that in perspective. My heart just hurts for him trying to do everyday things and missing out on activities he loves, and being in a cast when his baby sister is born.  He's resourceful and thankfully asks for help when he needs it, but tries to do things first.

I'd rather it be me. 

I love this kid so much and I'm so, so glad he's mine!!