the elbow story

today was supposed to be an easy day; the boys were off at school, a week's worth of rain had just finished up, i was planning on cleaning house & running a few errands but before i got anything started i went to check the mail. as i headed out the door i stopped & chatted with the neighbor which ended up being about half an hour.

i was leaving as her cell phone rang;
except the call was for me.
huh?
we have her listed as Z's emergency contact at school, so they were trying to reach me & i didn't carry my phone to the mailbox [bc that's just crazy].

Z fell on the playground during lunch recess; she said the way he was holding his arm had her concerned & he should see a dr. i found him in the office; he held his arm close to him, elbow in, said it hurt to fully extend & he couldn't twist it. i called his primary dr & told them he might have a fractured arm [we're all new at this civilian stuff, so i wanted to be sure i was doing the right thing] & they said "yeah, bring him on in".

we get there & i realize our primary care facility is a free clinic. [not that i was expecting anything swank, but the base hospital is high class in comparison.] the receptionist tells me they are swamped, the wait time is hours & they don't have an x-ray machine [ie, shit that should have been said on the phone] so she refers me to an urgent care facility.

i get on the road & head to UC not sure it's the right thing to, maybe i should just go to base? so i turn around to go the opposite direction a little way & then think about the fact that we are no longer military, we're X-military, what if i drive all the way over there only to be told they can help him?

*^&%^&&%()&^*&
confusion....

i'm driving & saying "i don't know what to do" & Z's in the backseat calmly saying to me "i'm sorry you don't know what to do momma" [cute or what? while momma has her little meltdown...]

i turn around again & go to UC....only to discover it's 2:30 & they don't open until 4!!!! they had some sort of clinic or something so at least the doors were open & the woman told me to take him back north to the hospital.

*^&%&^%&%(
yeah.....

um, i think it was about 3 hours of bs before i finally got Z to a place where someone could help him...good thing he wasn't bleeding bc i sure got the fricken run around. he got checked in, triaged & xrayed [that's when i realized he really was hurt, up until that point i was thinking it was possible he just was hamming it up a bit].

he broke his elbow just above the bend; apparently it's a weak spot & can often be a really bad break, but thankfully his was minor. it was kind of weird, right after we were triaged a boy walked in with his left arm all bandaged up too; he followed us through xray & diagnosis & he had the same break as Z. that made it made it easy for the PA to explain everything to all us.

as we waited there in the hallway a guy on the medical staff came through & told us they had 2 more arm problems, like Z had started a trend. they ended up bringing all the arm patients to the same hallway so we were all together.

the tech came out to wrap Z's arm up so we had to take his shirt off & that's when we saw the damage. let me start off with saying Z has some of the thinnest lil arms you can imagine, but when we pulled of his shirt his elbow looked more like an ankle.

he got all wrapped up with a temp-splint & were sent off with instructions to schedule an appt with an orthopedic surgeon[!!!!] in a day or two.