A Trip to the ER

On our second day, our only full day of our mini-vacation, we headed down to the playground around 10:30/11 am to let the kids play for a while.  We were not even there 5 minutes, when all of a sudden Damaris started screaming in panic.  I ran over to her, and she was stopped just short of going head first off the slide (see the last post for the slide picture).  Wanting to show her she didn't need to be scared, I said something like, "Damaris, it's OK, just turn your feet around like this, and you can get up."  As I am helping her do this, she, through tears, said, "No, my arm!" and lifted it up.  A look of horror crossed my face as I looked down at her arm, which now looked like it had two elbows instead of one.  Immediately I knew it was broken, and I calmly (by the grace of God) said, "Damaris, we need to go find Daddy.  We need to take you to the hospital so the doctor can help your arm feel better and fix it for you."  The whole way back to our condo, I kept reassuring her that she was going to be OK...and telling myself that this was not life threatening, people break their arm all the time, etc.  But knowing she was in so much pain just broke my heart.

Believe it or not, this isn't even the angle where it looked the worst.  If you have seen Harry Potter, it looked like Harry's arm when Professor Lockheart "fixes" his arm after he broke it.

 As you can see, she was in quite a bit of pain, but she was SOOOO good.  I was very proud of my brave girl and how she acted and followed directions and listened to what the nurses and doctors were telling her to do.

The hospital was amazing - they took us back right away, and the doctor was there within minutes.  They got her IV going, got her to x-rays and we were talking to the orthopedic surgeon - all of this within probably just an hour.  This was by far the best hospital experience I have ever had.  The staff were all amazing.

She broke both bones in her right arm between her wrist and her elbow.  It took a room full of about 8-10 people, 2 of them being orthopedic surgeons, and heavy doses of medicines to reset her arm.  They said she did amazing and only cried out one time.  They put a splint on her, which in my opinion is just like a cast only with an ace bandage instead of the fiberglass cloth.  They also are testing out a new sling for people to use instead of full sling, and decided to try it on her too.  It works very well and I am thankful we don't have the ones they normally give out.

This is the next day, when we got home.  She was still in quite a bit of pain, but the Tylenol with codeine that they gave her for the pain was making her throw up.  So they said to just give that to her at night and rotate ibuprofen and acetaminophen every 3 hours and see if that is strong enough.  She only had to take it for a few days!

Two days after her accident we had to follow up with an orthopedic surgeon near our home.  They did more x-rays and said that her break is healing nicely.  The doctor didn't want to put a permanent cast on yet in case it would displace it again, so instead he just wrapped right around the splint with the normal fiberglass cloth (picture above).  We went back this past week for another x-ray, where they took off the old cast and put a new cast on (light blue now).  That was kind of painful and a lot of tears.  Hopefully the next time they have to switch casts it will hurt less.  We still are going weekly for x-rays.

Still praying for a clean recovery...this was traumatic enough, so I don't even want to think about what the next steps are if it doesn't heal correct...trusting God for His protection and healing!