Last Tuesday, my daughter Arielle fell from the monkey bars and hurt her arm. As you can tell by the blog post title, it was broken, But we waited 2 days to see if it was healing. It didn't bruise, just remained red and swollen. So we decided to take her to the doctor as a precaution even though she said it was starting to feel better.
Jeremy was not happy that I asked him to go and take off from work. He thought it was a waste of time. I made an appointment at the pediatrician at 4:30. They said they'd send Arielle for an x-ray if necessary. I know now that we should have gone straight to an orthopedist, but at the time the pediatrician seemed like the correct doctor. So by 5pm they were seen at the pediatrician. Then, they went upstairs to the x-ray place and they got the scans which showed she broke her ulna and possibly the radius as well near her wrist. Jeremy then had to go back to the pediatrician who called the hospital and scheduled the orthopedist there to see her and give her a cast. They stopped at the house to get dinner and went on their way. When they got to the hospital, the ER gave her a temporary cast and told them to go see an ortho in the morning!
Luckily, Jeremy was persistent and insisted that the doctor on call try to reach the ortho. After all, we already paid two $20 copays and an ER copay of $50 without the correct treatment! The doctor agreed to call the ortho and locate him. (The pediatrician had supposedly called ahead and he said he was at the hospital.) Finally, the ortho came and gave Arielle a cast from just below the elbow up to her fingers.
Arielle was really well behaved, considering the pain, the effort of the day, and the fact that they only arrived home at 11pm! She even went to school the next day (it was Friday so a 1/2 day).
Arielle was concerned that everyone would be staring at her. But in the end, what really got to her was telling the story over and over again to everyone who asked her "what happened?" (A week later, people are still asking!)
On Sunday we took out all our permanent markers and she carried them around asking her grandparents, cousins, and friends to write on her cast.
Arielle needs some assistance with daily living needs now including dressing, washing, bathing, and sometimes eating. She is able to hold a pencil (though not very well) so she has kept up with classwork and homework.
A week has passed so far. We look forward to getting the okay to have it removed. Our checkup is in 3 weeks.
Refuah Shlemah, sounds like she's well on her way to healing.
ReplyDeleteI'm like that too (maybe it's a dad thing?), I try to avoid the doctor as much as possible. Last Friday, our 12 year old had a fever >104, so my wife called me at work so I could leave early and take her to the doctor. Turns out the doctor was only arriving at 7pm and shabbat was starting a few minutes after 7. In the end, we decides just a few minutes before 7 NOT to go to the doctor because the Advil she took was working and the fever went down. Sure enough by morning she was feeling fine and was back to normal.
Shabbat Shalom!