It was almost 9:00 pm and we were all winding down for the night. The kids, as usual, were just as rambunctious as they were at 9:00 am though. I was in the bedroom and Billy was in the kitchen. The kids were in their room horse playing on the top bunk bed for those last few final minutes before we were gonna shoo them off to sleep. All of the sudden, we heard a loud *thud* and a blood curdling scream like I've never heard come out of our children before. I flew through my bedroom and into the hallway about the same time that Billy came running down the hallway. All I saw was Gabe (our eldest) holding his arm at the elbow and his forearm resembling the shape of a Z.
Billy grabbed him and held his arm against his body while I shut myself in the bedroom and dialed 911. I couldn't even look at it, it was so terrible looking. Other than the initial scream though, Gabe was as cool as a cucumber. Shock, I'm sure, but his only request was that he not look at it. I gave the 911 operator our information and headed outside to flag down the ambulance. I could hear them in the distance as I got to the curb.
EMS and Firefighters arrived (at the delight of Brayden, our youngest) and put a cardboard box/splint around the break and carried Gabe to the ambulance. In hindsight, we probably could have driven him ourselves, but it was the craziest thing we'd ever seen and I wasn't too keen on the idea of just casually driving to the hospital and sitting in the waiting room. Ambulance was the most direct route. And it worked. Brayden stayed on the couch ooo-ing and aww-ing at all the lights from the emergency vehicles and Alyssa (our daughter, middle child) was in tears because she was scared and upset. They were also both terrified that they were in TONS of trouble since they were the ones to push him off the bunk bed. It was an accident though, so they got nothing more than a stern talking to.
The hospital went pretty smoothly. We went straight back of course and he was evaluated pretty quickly. Although I did have to roll my eyes at the nurse that asked me, "So when did the symptoms start?" "Uh, when he hit the floor and his bones broke!" She wasn't impressed with my tone nor my answer. I was frazzled though, so I blame my attitude on that.
After some morphine and x-rays, they saw that he had broken both bones in the forearm. One a few inches above the wrist and the other a couple inches above that. A 'very common break', or so I was told. They decided to repair the break with a bier block and manual manipulation of the bones. I had to leave the room because I couldn't watch my little guy go through all that, but everyone said he did pretty good. He hollered and yelled, but I would too if you were shoving my broken bones back together. I don't care how much pain killers I had in me. He's currently in a splint and goes back tomorrow for his appointment with the orthopedic doctor. Hopefully to get his hard cast on. I'll feel MUCH better when he has his hard cast on.
I don't ever want to have to see any of my babies in pain like that again. It was the worst, scariest night of my life..... so far. My poor kids (especially the boys) are accident prone though. I'm sure this won't be the last time we see the inside of the emergency room, but I sure hope it's the last time for quite awhile.
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