
As a mom, you are always worrying about the next tragedy. Or maybe, as a paranoid mom like me you are. I drive down the street and someone cuts me off and I think "See! There! We could have just been in an accident! My kids could have been hurt!" Or one of the kids gets sick and I start thinking that this could be the one rare illness that debilitates or kills my child and no one will be able to do anything about it. You may be surprised to hear that I think these things, but I do. I never did think though that one afternoon my son would accidentally
pull the glass top of a kitchen table onto his foot causing the foot to
break in three places and the table top to completely shatter all over
the floor. Yeah, of all things that could go wrong, this was not one
that I considered. That's because I hadn't considered that we would have put a table cloth on the table for the first time so that we wouldn't have to clean it every 5 minutes and that then we'd be having the windows washed at my parents house and in order to get to one window they would nudge the table just a bit (not realizing that it was a glass top because the tablecloth was on it) thus completely destabilizing the table so that when a certain sweet 3 1/2 year old reached out and leaned on the table to grab his play dough it would slide down and break his foot.
Oh my gosh. Seriously. Did this really happen? Yes, yes it did. I knew right away it was broken. I can tell the hysterical crying-just-to-cry crying and the real this-really-hurts crying and he was doing the latter. And then even as he was trying to get himself together he'd just melt down saying "Ouchie! Ouchie! Ouchie!" Within 15 minutes of it happening we were on the road to our trusty Alamo Heights Minor Emergency Clinic (We've been there several times before and love them. It's run by two former ER docs who both have young kids and they are always great). By the time we got there, Grayson had calmed down and we started talking about getting to see a picture of his foot and how cool it would be to look at his bones. Although the week of strep led us to watch more TV than I'd like, I'm grateful for Sid the Science Kid and his bones investigation. By the time we got in there I actually had him excited to get an x-ray! He was great but so was the staff. He was so good in fact, that everyone was surprised his foot was actually broken, much less in three places. He told me he wanted to get one of those cameras (the x-ray) to have at home. They splinted him up and gave him some lollipops and a script for tylenol with codeine and sent us on our way with instructions to follow up with a pediatric orthopedist when we get home. We were told he'll have to be carried until he is allowed to bear weight - so at least until he sees the orthopedist and gets the real cast (and I'm assuming longer). And then he'll have to be in the hard cast for 4-6 weeks. The one bright spot is that they do make covers so that he should be able to swim in a couple of weeks.
It was a rough night. He wouldn't take the tylenol with codeine (not a surprise) so we just did tylenol every four hours. He slept in my room in hour long spurts. It was no fun to have my sweet baby boy wake up in pain that I really could do little about. He watched a lot of TV - thank goodness for all night kids programming (which I'm pretty sure we don't have in Dallas).
Today was much, much better. Went out for both lunch and dinner with the Acostas (Annie always puts a smile on his face). Daddy gets in tomorrow and we'll be well on the road to recovery.
I have to say that in all of this I just find myself thankful. That nothing worse happened even though it really could have. That I have so many great family and friends to help out. That we have great health insurance and medical care. That my little man has tolerated everything so well.
Yes, we'll miss out on little sluggers and quite a bit of swimming and sprinkler parks and play with friends, but it's a pretty brief period of time and if I do it right, it'll just mean we have more time for libraries and books and art projects and play at home.
Yes, I could use a 48 hour nap or so. But really, couldn't I always?
(Oh, and if you expected a call from me today but didn't get it? Tomorrow! I promise!)
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