Broken Tuffie

Last Saturday, E came running into the kitchen. I was making pizza dough and so my hands were covered in it.  E showed me his arm and I grabbed the keys and hollered at the other boys to get into the car.  E told me he was climbing his tree and tried to jump to his rope swing, but missed the rope.  He had done this several times before, and his dad even said, "don't do that, you'll break your arm." Of course, E had to test the limits.

We went to the hospital, on the way I was prompted to call a friend of ours to give E a blessing.  Daddy was at a youth event 2 hours away.  So, I called this friend, and he was only a few minutes away from the hospital.  We walked into the ER (G was in bare feet because of the mad rush to get into the car).  The triage nurse whisked us to a chair.  "I called to get you a room and the order is in for an x-ray." Up till now E had only cried and whimpered how bad it hurt, but no crazy screaming, like I would've been doing.  Our friend showed up and blessed E that he would have the strength to endure what needed to be done to fix his arm.  

 We got the x-rays, we had to wait for about 20 minutes before a nurse or doctor came in.  The whole time E was very calm, and just kept saying every once in a while, "This hurts" or "I'm still hurting."  He was so tough.  The  ER doctor said we may have to go by ambulance to the children's hospital 40 minutes away, but that he was waiting on the orthopedic surgeon to contact him.  Not quite 20 minutes later the ortho Dr was there.  He looked at the x-rays and told me that we would have to have a surgery because E wouldn't be able to withstand the pain caused by setting the bones. I later learned this is a Colles Fracture. Both the ulna and radius were cleanly broken.  The top view you can see, but the side view looked like stairs because the bones were on top of each other.

But E had been given morphine and was still lucid, although a bit tired.  The Ortho Dr kept talking to me and to E and then decided he would try to set the bones right in the ER with only local anesthesia. He came back with a huge syringe with a 3 inch needle, I thought this will go through his arm!  E got a bit worried and I told him it would help his arm to not feel anything.  The Ortho Dr, looked over and said, "That's optimistic, he will still feel pain."  Thanks for breaking it to him gently!  So after the shots, where E just shouted "AAhhhh owww that hurts." but didn't move or flinch, the Ortho Dr brought in two ER Dr's and they all told E they had fallen out of trees before.  The Ortho Dr grabbed E's wrist and the other Dr's held the upper arm and his legs.  I was holding his other hand and had my arm around his head.  We were superfluous.  The Ortho Dr pulled and set the bones. E shouted, "AAAhhhowww that hurts." again,  and a few tears, but again he held perfectly still and didn't flinch at all. I was staring at him amazed.  While we were waiting to be checked out, I was reminded of the blessing.  E truly had the strength needed.  WOW!  I still look at what his arm was and where it is now (the x-rays below were taken 3 days later) and how he held so still.

After we were at the pharmacy picking up some medicine for him, we met 4 angels.  One talked to E and distracted him while I had to talk to the pharmacist. This angel told E he had broken his arm, and that it healed perfectly.  We then went to Subway and a woman in front of us in line talked to E and told him she had broken her arm and that it was completely fixed.  A man in front of her bought E a cookie.  Another man told E that he had to learn how to write and play piano left-handed after breaking his right arm and that his left arm became his best friend because he learned it all.  All of these people helped us both to feel better.

Now we just have to keep him from bumping his arm until he can wear a hard cast. So far he is doing great.