What a week!

Let me begin at the beginning. We woke up Thursday morning with the intention of making "back to school" cookies. I needed brown sugar to complete the recipe. So right after breakfast we headed out the door. In the plaza with the grocery store is a Kohls and I decided to run in there and see if they had a dress for Gabi to wear to our scheduled photo session the following evening.

While in Kohls Gabi began to complain of a tummy ache. She often has mysterious headaches and tummy aches so I being the excellent mother that I am I told her to go potty and pretended she was fine. As I shopped I started to believe that this was a Real tummy ache so we hurried out of Kohls. I asked her if she thought we could run into the grocery store just to get the sugar we were after. She said yes so in we went. After we grabbed the sugar we were on our way out of the baking aisle when her tummy ache started spewing all over the floor. A kind passer by said she would alert store personnel. I felt sorry for the young man who appeared with the "puke kit". But he kept reassuring me that he was fine and they would take care of everything. I cleaned Gabi up with the wipes I had in my purse and threw her "puked on and too small anyway old crocs" away. We paid for our sugar at the customer service and hurried out.

Later, after Andy was down for his nap and Gabi was quarantined to her room with the portable DVD player, Evan and I started to make the cookies. He had broken the eggs and I was about to stir them in so he decided to go check on his computer game downstairs. In his hurry to get there and back he decided to go over the end table instead of around it. He had socks on and slipped falling head first off the table onto the basement floor. Apparently the carpet didn't soften the blow much. Through the sound of the mixer I heard the most horrific scream of my parenting years. I went running down and found him laying on the ground writhing in pain with an ugly distorted arm on the ground. He kept rolling around with out moving the arm. The elbow had swollen up before I even got to him. So when I looked it seemed as though the bones were out of place. I grabbed the straight piece of race track laying next to him and ran upstairs for the ace bandages. (you know the ones we have from last year when gabi broke her collarbone and Chad ruptured his Achilles) I also gave him some Motrin. I immobilized his arm and carried him to the car and then waited for Chad to get home so I could leave the other napping and sick kids.

By the time we got to the ER he said "the medicine is winning. At first the bones were winning but now the medicine is winning and it doesn't hurt so bad"
We did the typical ER visit. Wait...Triage...Wait...Room...Wait...Doctor...Wait...Xray...Wait...Doctor...Wait...Splint...Wait...Papers and then pay and go home.
While we were waiting and it seemed they were going to send us to an Orthopaedic, I called Chad and had him set up an appointment. By this time it was 4:45 and I wanted to make sure we got one before the office closed. You would think I was an expert at all this, but then you wouldn't know that we had gone One whole year and Twenty-five days without visiting the ER.

We went to the Ortho the next morning. After being there for two hours full of more waiting and more xrays during which I had all three kids in a tiny exam room, the doctor declared the elbow definitely fractured. But he couldn't tell for sure that it wasn't dislocated so he wanted us to go for an MRI. This was scheduled for 4:15 that afternoon. There was no way to get the results back before the weekend so we had to make an appointment to revisit the Ortho on Monday. They gave me a Tylenol with codeine prescription to give Evan before the MRI to help him stay still. My neighbor was nice enough to watch the other two kids for this. But we waited until 5:00 before they called us back to the machine. By this time Evan was finally starting to feel the effects of the drugs. He had to lay on his belly with his arm extended in front of his head. His arm was stuffed into a small tunnel and then his whole body was rolled into the big tunnel. he was very good. He would only wiggle a little while trying to get comfortable and he finally fell asleep. When the technician pulled him out he was sound asleep and the drool was all over the pillow. However this took over an hour. During which time I did not have my phone because I was in the magnetic room with Evan. So by the time I get out it is after six. I quickly called Chad praying he was almost home to get the other kids and he had not even left work. So I actually beat him to pick up the kids at 6:45. I was embarrassed, I had told my friend I thought I would be back by 5:15. She was very gracious though and I am so thankful. We went back today and the MRI showed no dislocation. He did chip the bone on the inside of his elbow. So he got the red cast he really wanted. His appt was at 2:45. Gabi gets out of school at 3:40 about ten minutes away so i thought we would make it. I asked my kind neighbor to be my back up if we didn't make it back. But with her sad tearful good bye to her kindergardner this morning I was not able to confirm that she could. Well we did not even get called back to the exam room until 3:50. There were big signs saying "No cell phones" all over the office, but I need to make sure someone was picking up Gabi. So I tried texting my neighbor. I then texted Chad and told him he might need to get Gabi. And I got no response from anyone. So I tried both again and nothing. So I snuck outside and called both. I finally got Chad and asked him to call the school because at this point Gabi was done. He got back to me about the same time my neighbor texted me to say she had Gabi. By this point I was in panic mode. But Phew at least that was OK. Having a two year old in the waiting room all this time was not helping my stress levels though. We then did not see the doctor until after four. He reviewed the disc of the MRI that we brought and did an exam. We then waited for the cast and then waited for the cast to be applied. It was 5:00 before we got out of there. I again felt terrible for having my neighbor have my kid all this time. And I was ready to leave the boys on the side of the street. Not having any family within hours of you is very hard during times of emergency. It is hard to lean on friends for so much help. And nearly impossible to stay sane in waiting rooms with children that long.

All that to say Evan is in a very cool red cast. He has to wear it for three weeks. And then no contact (gym, recess, FOOTBALL that we couldn't wait to start and payed alot of money for ) for another two weeks.