Broken Arm

I mentioned yesterday that my son broke his arm. Here's what happened.

My first grader was playing on the playground at school on Thursday. He was on the platform for the slide and fell backwards. He put his arms behind him to try and break his fall. It worked. He landed on his right arm and it broke.

He went to the nurse and was crying hysterically. She called and left a message on my cell phone asking me to come pick him up. She said that "it is probably nothing, but he hurt his elbow and won't stop crying. I think you should take a look at it." I called her back within 5 minutes and left a message saying that I was on my way to pick up my 5 year old at preschool and that I would be there as soon as I could. The school nurse called me back and this time we actually spoke. She told me that my son calmed down and said he was feeling better and he wanted to go back to class. So she let him go.

I thought that meant he was ok. That he might have been a little emotional earlier. Maybe the nurse was exaggerating how much my son was actually crying.

I met my son at the bus stop. When we got to the house, he went straight to the couch and wanted a blanket. This is very unusual for my son. I took his temperature. It was 99.0, just a little high. After an hour my son started saying that his arm hurt. I thought he was faking. He had been home for an hour and this was the first he said anything about his arm hurting. I decided to take a look. I tried to take off his shirt. He screamed. You know that kind of scream. The scream that has a certain pitch that lets moms know when something is really wrong.

I pushed up his sleeve and saw it very swollen. It didn't look right. I knew something was really wrong. I found a neighbor who would take my 5 year old. I called my husband and let him know that I was taking our son to the ER.

My 6 year old is very active. He didn't want to wait in the ER. He didn't want to lay on the bed. He started rolling around and trying to push the doctor's stool around the room. Every time his arm moved he cried. But he still kept moving. Frustrating!

We did read some books and then went for the x-ray. Yup, it's broken. Finally they gave him some pain medicine. He got all goofy and started making animal noises for me to guess which animal he was. It was cute. He was feeling better. He was bored and he wanted to go home. He didn't want to wait anymore. I have a feeling this is similar to what happened at the nurse's office at school. He was bored and tired of waiting for me so he asked to go back to class with his friends. I still can't believe the nurse let him!

We got home after 8pm that night. Then we had dinner and I still had to pick up the prescription of pain medicine that the ER doctor had prescribed. It was a late night to say the least.

Now my 6 year old has a splint and a sling. He hates it. He has an appointment on Tuesday morning to get the cast put on.

This isn't his first broken bone. He broke his leg when he was 2. I just hope this is the last.