Urgent Care-2010

Here's to hoping that our trip to Urgent Care last night was the ONLY one we'll have to make in 2010. Seeing as it is only February, that is somewhat doubtful, but a mom can hope!

Last night Darin and the kids were wrestling. Ok, Darin was throwing the kids off of the chair, but it was all in good fun. Until he threw Tyson and heard a "pop". Then there was crying. And for the next hour and a half, a refusal from Tyson to change positions and lots of panic when he thought we would even consider moving him.

Darin held Tyson for a while, then we ate dinner (it was in the oven at the time of the "incident" and at this point we still thought he was just overtired and faking it. How's that for honesty!) While the three of us were eating, Jori kept giving us all sorts of medical advice like "When I hurt my arm, I do this (stretches arm out a couple times) then it is better" or "When I hurt my knees I do this (hops around ON HER KNEES several times) and they are better" or "When I hurt my eyes, I do this (blinks eyes rapidly) and they are better". It was pretty funny and she was so serious about it.

After dinner I started making phone calls. First to a friend that we thought had dealt with a child's broken arm (we were wrong), then to Darin's sister, Daci, who did have a child break a wrist. Her description of Makenna was eerily similar to what we were seeing with Tyson, only not in his wrist. Then I called the after hours hot line to see if there was a way we could determine if our 5 1/2 year old was seriously injured or just afraid of the pain that MIGHT occur if he moved his arm. The nurse said he was probably seriously in pain. Bad mom.

Then Darin took over the phone calling to find an Urgent Care center that was still open, as we were hoping to avoid going to the ER. He found one, so I called up Rachel to see if Jori could come hang with them for a while. Then we tried getting some clothes on Tyson-he and Jori had been playing "swimming" for a lot of the afternoon and he was still in his bathing suit. He was NOT having it, so Darin carefully wrapped him in a blanket and got him buckled up.

We dropped off Jori, had a few more moments doubting whether we actually needed to be going to Urgent Care, then finally went after Tyson let out a yelp when Darin examined (aka tried to make him move) his arm. Right before we left the house, my friend Juli had reminded me that another friend had a child that had had an arm injury, so on the way to Urgent Care I called Lisa. Her little Ellie had suffered from a dislocated elbow and when she described that situation, she could have been describing Tyson.

So we got to Urgent Care, told them we thought our boy had a dislocated elbow, went through the x-ray process just in case (I am SO glad Darin was there for that as it would have broken my heart based on what Darin said). Then came the real fun-popping the arm back into place. Oh my brave boy. He really did SUCH a great job. There was some crying and when when we told him to say "thank-you" to the doctor he only glared, but he was one tough cookie. It was really a super fast fix and once Tyson realized he could move his arm without too much pain, his spirits were much improved.

So we headed back to Hudsonville, stopped to get Jori and let Tyson show off his cool new sling, then headed home and had our two sleepy kids in bed a little before 9. Tyson is almost as good as new today, although it still hurts when he tries to extend it all the way, so we'll be keeping the sling on another day at least.

Here's Tyson with his "arm patch". I am not sure why he calls it that, but it could be because "my sling is NOT like David's sling" (from the Bible).


And here is the kooky kid describing his injury in his own kooky way.