Lessons from the ER

Our week has been turned upside down a bit-- L took a fall Tuesday afternoon and fractured her elbow.  She is doing remarkably well now and getting back to her old self, but taking her to the ER was sort of a profound experience for me in several ways, and I feel compelled to write about it here while the experience is still fresh in my mind.

So first, I'll try to summarize the event so that you'll have a bit of background.

L was laying down on her stomach on top of our Little Tikes Cozy Coupe:

Both M and I had seen her playing that way, and told her to get down, but I was making supper in the kitchen and M was puttering around changing out of his work clothes so we weren't paying close attention.  N later told us that she slid down off the top of the car accidentally and fell down onto her right side.  She yelped and ran inside, clutching her arm with her eyes wide.  She was crying hysterically and kept repeating, "My arm bended the wrong way!!" We kept feeling her arm for a break but everything felt normal (because the break was right at her elbow we couldn't feel it) and so we waited a little while to see if she would improve.  I tried to get her to eat supper but she refused.  By about 7 PM we were pretty convinced that something was either broken or dislocated, given the fact that there was a fair amount of swelling and L was pretty much unable to bend her arm at the elbow no matter how hard she tried.  Plus I knew that my tough-as-nails L was not a child who would carry on so hysterically if she wasn't truly in a lot of pain.

So off to the ER we went-- M stayed home with C and N who were going to sleep by that time.  Little did we know at that time what a long night it would be.  I took her first to our local hospital (never again!) where they took an x-ray and then we waited about two hours to see the doctor.  He told me that he was "pretty sure" she had a fracture right on her growth plate, and we would need to see a pediatric orthopedic specialist to determine the right course of action for healing without growth problems.  He wanted to send us in an ambulance to the larger city hospital, but since L was so frightened already I insisted on driving her.  So I drove her into the city at 11:45 PM.  She had slept a bit in the local hospital and slept some in the car on the way to the city.

 

When we got to the bigger hospital, we waited around a while, and then they informed us that the x-rays that were taken at the local hospital were basically crap, and they would have to take a whole new set of extensive x-rays.  At that point they were talking about the possibility of multiple fractures and the need for sedation and morphine to re-set the bones.  So we went through the second round of extensive x-rays (I think they took about 20 or 30 different pictures) which was of course extremely painful for L and hard for me to watch.  Then we waited around for the results-- they had given L a large dose of ibuprofen at that point so she was able to sleep a little more peacefully.

At long last the doctor poked his head in and informed us that the images had come out very well, that L was a champ for holding so still while they took the pictures, and that it looked like it was a best-case scenario, there was only a single fracture, and everything was aligned quite well and there would be no need for sedation or re-setting any bones.  Relief flooded over both of us, and L sat right up in bed and started talking my ear off while we waited for the next step.  About 30 minutes later a team of orthopedic specialists and residents came in and put a cast on her arm.  Although L had insisted from the beginning that she didn't want a cast, and her eyes welled up with tears when they told her she would be getting one, she grit her teeth and smiled even as they were bending and poking her arm to make sure it was in the right position to be casted.  And when they asked her what color she wanted her cast to be, she said without hesitation, "Pink."  Obviously she had thought everything through.

We got the discharge papers, they gave L a popsicle (I really wish I had a picture of her standing in the hallway at the check-out counter in her hospital gown with her pink cast, smiling and eating a popsicle like nothing had happened).  We were home by 4:30 AM and asleep by 5.

We have been taking it easy the past two days, recovering from our lost night of sleep and gradually weaning L off painkillers.

 

(She has been most comfortable without a shirt on. Whatever works, right?)

 So, the lessons I learned:

1) Our children understand way more than we give them credit for, and have better intuition than we do sometimes.  L knew that something was wrong with her arm and kept insisting on it, even when we weren't sure initially whether to take her in to the hospital.  She doesn't always have the language to express what she knows, but her understanding of the situation was remarkably adult-like.  And she absorbed every word the doctors said, so much so that there wasn't much explaining that I had to do with her.  Even as she trembled in pain while they moved her around during the second set of x-rays, she remembered the sequence from her previous set in the first hospital, and was already trying to move herself and anticipate the position she would need for the next picture.  Most of all, she felt the tension and anxiety of every adult in the room, and she felt our relief when the second set of x-rays came back.  I already knew about staying calm and being strong for my children, but this experience was a good reminder of that necessity.  L especially is sharp as a tack and picks up on everything.  I was just blown away by that, and frankly, pretty proud of the strength and confidence she showed throughout the whole night.

2) I was keenly aware the whole time, even when we feared the worst and multiple fractures, of how much worse our situation could have been, and how lucky we were.  I found that even as I held her for all of those long hours and she was whimpering with so much pain, waves of thankfulness kept coming over me.  She was alive, she would heal, her pain would go away, and at the very worst she might have a growth deformity.  What if the moment I had turned my back had been the moment she stepped out in front of a moving car?  Or what if our hospital stay was for a terminal illness?  As a mother, your mind occasionally goes down those paths anyway, but there's nothing like an ER visit to ram that point home and make you truly thankful.  Every moment that we are given with each other is a gift, and I never want to take that for granted.

3) I am in awe of the health care workers who helped us, and all people in the helping profession.  It amazes me that they can give of themselves so selflessly to help others on a daily basis.  They are remarkable people and deserve our gratitude.

Maybe it was just staying up all night and my mind going to weird places, but this experience definitely made an impact on me and I won't soon forget it.

It has taken us a couple of days to recover from the night of missed sleep, but L woke up this morning in a much more cheerful mood and is currently playing quite happily.  I still feel somewhat wasted. I've been thinking of all of the youth group lock-ins I attended back in the day and I don't remember taking a week to recover from staying up all night, but... well, I'm not a teenager anymore right?  So life seems to be proceeding as normal, and probably normal blogging will resume soon, too.  Thanks for indulging me a little deep thinking here.