Not long after Tyler came out of the womb and I found out he was a he, I braced myself for roughhousing and dirt, farting and burping, blood and broken bones that is stereotypical of raising boys. In his short 3.5 years, we've now experienced all of that.
Tyler broke his arm.
The crazy thing though is that he didn't even break it "being a boy." Not jumping off the back of the couch playing super heroes or rough playing with his sister or attempting a crazy stunt at the playground. He fell in the shower. So pretty much the same way the elderly break bones!
Lately on bath night, Joel has been giving the kids a shower right when he gets home with them after school before I get home from work. That way, bath is all done and we're in less of a mad dash to get through dinner and bath before bedtime.
Picture this. Columbus. 2016. Lily is 5 with a going on 15 kind of attitude and she was dishing it out from the moment she was picked up from school. Joel even texted me and said "take a moment for yourself now, before you get home, Lily's in rare form."
For the last several months, they've taken showers in our master bathroom instead of bathes in their own bathroom. So Joel starts working on their showers and convinces Lily to go first. He gets her through and she's still dishing the attitude and making demands on Joel's attention. Meanwhile Tyler's ready to get in the shower. You can imagine the three ring circus, right? So Joel go to deal with Lily and Tyler goes ahead and gets in the shower. When doing so, he slips and falls. Joel's back was to him so he didn't see it happen so we're not sure if he landed on his arm or if it was the act of him putting his arm out to catch himself that did it. Either way, the screaming and the swelling was instant.
Joel assumed right away that his arm was broken.
He calls me right away. I almost didn't pick up because I was already on the phone with one of my employees and texting with another trying to get him conferenced in. But something told me to pick up so put my work phone on mute and answered my cell.
[screaming in the background]
Me, "Hi what's up? I'm on the phone."
Joel, "Guess what happened?"
Me, "What?"
"Pretty sure Tyler broke his arm."
"WHAT? Oh my God! What do you want me to do? -- [unmute work phone] HEATHER I HAVE TO GO RIGHT NOW! EMERGENCY AT HOME!! [slam down work phone] -- Do you want me to meet you at the hospital? Do you want me to come home? What do you need me to do?"
"Come home."
So I grab up my stuff and RUN out of the building. Tear across the parking lot and drive like a bat out of hell across town. And at 5:10, that means hitting every single light red. But somehow I still ran through the door at home 15 minutes after Joel called me. So grateful for living in this small town!
Meanwhile Joel's dealing with a screaming Tyler and a Lily that is still demanding Joel's attention because she clearly doesn't understand the gravity of the situation. Finally Joel yells at her to be quiet and go get dressed immediately because we have to take Tyler to the hospital because he's hurt very bad. She snaps out of her attitude at that and starts complying with instructions.
I come in the door and Tyler's laying on our bed clothed and ready to go. He's got a makeshift splint on his arm with a couple of small boards tied up with Walmart sacks! Joel had cut a t-shirt up the side to get it on him and pinned it back together with safety pins. So resourceful and creative - even under stress. Very impressive!
Joel packs up Tyler in the car, who is whimpering by this time but not screaming. I start throwing random food in a Walmart sack because I have no idea what a trip to the ER will look like - how long we'll be there or whatever - and it's nearly dinner time. Leave it to me - we're in crisis mode and I think to grab food.
Joel and I drive separate in case one of us needs to bring Lily back home. On the way, I am chatting about anything I can think of to keep Tyler distracted. We talked about X-rays which they had just learned about at school the week before. Tyler asked if it was going to print out on a paper that he can take home. So cute.
Lily was trying to comfort him by touching his shoulder or leg or anything she can reach. Which he's really not interested in. It kind of broke my heart further to have to tell Lily that while what she was doing was really kind and sweet, but Tyler just needed to be left alone.
We get to the ER and it's FREEZING and windy enough to practically blow us all away. Of course in our mad dash out of the house neither kid had a coat on. A night full of awesome parenting moments.
Thank the Lord, we are seen right away at the ER.
They took Tyler's vitals and wheeled him back to a room where we waited to get the X-rays. They wouldn't give him any pain medicine until he saw the doctor and that wasn't going to happen until after the X-rays. I was losing my mind over this, feeling sick that Tyler was in pain. But, he was in decent spirits during this time. Not crying much - just an occasional whimper and request to go home.
After about 20 minutes we make our way to the X-ray room - all of us tromping along with Tyler trying to stay out of the way. Once in the X-ray room only one of us could stay so I did. This was the absolute worst part of the experience (for me). The X-ray tech had to move Ty's arm around a bit to get a good picture and that caused him so much pain. He was screaming and crying huge fat tears and I was trying not to cry and the tech was doing his best not to hurt poor Tyler and the whole thing was just awful. I'm not sure how long we were in there - maybe 15 minutes? Felt like eternity.
Then tromp back to the room while waited for the doctor to review the X-rays. That was probably another 20 minutes. Then he comes in and confirms it's broken and starts talking about maybe need surgery, don't know, have to talk to the orthopedic doctor, probably don't need surgery but not for him to say and blah blah blah. Joel and I kind of freak out at the word "surgery" but we hold it together.
Tyler then FINALLY gets some pain meds and they put a splint on him - with slightly better materials than wood scraps and Walmart sacks.
We finally get out of there after about 2 hours total - which was far less time than I was anticipating. Joel, the bad ass Dad, makes Tyler walk out of the ER on his own two feet. And tells him to smile for a picture. Tyler's face says it all.
I was really worried about how much pain Tyler was in and whether he would be able to sleep. But they gave him tylenol with hydrocodone and he slept really well from about 8:30pm until 3:00am when he woke up crying out in pain. I fly out of my bedroom and rush to him and he's crying, "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, my arm still hurts. It hurts, Mommy, it hurts." I rush to get him more medicine and moments after I do he starts to relax and close his eyes and drifts right back off to sleep. Whew.
The next morning, Tyler gets up, hyper as all get out. Talking a million miles an hour about any and everything. I think he was high on hydrocodone. He was totally silly and completely bouncing off the walls. It was cute and a little disconcerting at the same time. I was just sure he was going to try to do a cartwheel or flip or flying superhero leap and just injure himself further. He was insisting on wearing these shoes from Jackson which were about 3 sizes too big and I just KNEW he was going to trip and fall.
I went off to work and Joel stayed home with Tyler and called the orthopedic doctor first thing so we could get an appointment to have him checked out there. We were lucky and got an appointment pretty early in the day so I met them over there.
While we were waiting, Tyler was goofing around, acting completely silly and HIGH AS A KITE. He was exercising, stretching and running (trying to prove to me that his shoes WERE NOT too big and he WAS NOT going to fall).
We get back to the exam room and finally get to see a picture of the X-ray. We were completely shocked and expecting something far worse than what we saw, based on the swelling we saw the night before. The bulge on the bottom side of his arm is what we THOUGHT was his bone pushing out. But it wasn't at all, it was the swelling. The orthopedic doctor said that in children blood production happens all throughout their skeletal system (vs adults, it's concentrated in certain areas). So when a child breaks a bone, there's typically a lot of swelling because of all the blood pooling.
The doctor tells us that it's your "everyday stereotypical little boy / little girl broken arm." The break isn't in the growth plate and is very straight forward in terms of healing. He only needs to wear the cast for probably about 4 weeks.
We asked him what color cast he wanted and without hesitation, he chose blue. Joel took about 87 pictures. Here's just a few.
After finishing up at the doctor, Joel took Tyler to the mall to buy the kid some new shoes. I was pretty sick of fighting with him about wearing Jackson's too big shoes. They run over to the mall and find some Batman shoes. Tyler shows Joel how fast he run through the mall in his new shoes. They sent me a video. It was pretty hysterical.
That afternoon, Tyler finally got the bath that he was meant to get the day before. Comes out looking handsome as ever with his new shoes, shark hair and bad ass cast! And wearing a Mr Lucky T-shirt which his Daddy thought was hilariously ironic.
