Saturday, May 12

When The Bough Breaks


Today was the Cub Mobile race at the capitol, where Cub Scouts get to race in the cars they built. After we got checked in, there was quite a long wait for the races to start. While we were waiting, Dylan and some other boys were climbing some small trees and dropping down to the ground, a drop of about 6-7 feet.

I didn't see it happen, but he must have miscalculated somehow, and he fell out of the tree to the grass below. When I saw him crying and holding his right arm, I suspected something pretty serious had happened because he has a high tolerance for pain and doesn't complain until it's pretty bad. I examined him as best I can as a non-medical person and found that he was very tender on the sides of his wrist. He could also not twist his arm or make a fist.

I waited about 15 minutes to see if he would snap out of it. When he didn't, I decided to take him to the emergency room. It was pretty quiet down there, so we got in fast. The x-ray showed that his arm is broken! They sent him home with a Velcro cast, and we will see an orthopedic doc tomorrow to determine if he'll need a plaster cast and for how long.

I was actually proud of how calm I stayed through the whole thing; however, I did have a small breakdown when we got home and I could relax. I was beating myself up about letting him climb that tree, but then I thought, eight year old boys are supposed to climb trees, right?

Here's a funny side-bar: the ER doc was a drummer friend of Brad's, the ER nurse was one of my former JFK moms, and the ER nurse practitioner was a dancer whom I had coached on Centahnas. Her daughter is also a second-grader at Northridge, and I think I talked her into signing up for Just For Kix next year.

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