Never a Dull Moment

Around the time when my son, Ike, tends to leave school, I got a phone call from his teacher. She told me that he injured himself in school and still is in pain, so I should be aware and take a look at it when he gets home.

My mom is a physical therapist, and, as luck would have it, had told me five minutes beforehand that she would be visiting us this evening. When she came by, I had her take a look at my son's shoulder, since she usually is good at diagnosing sprains, showing exercises to help things feel better, and even able to move joints back into place that were out of alignment.

Unfortunately my mom told me that she doesn't think she can help, it looks dislocated to her, she even showed me how she could tell, and told me that I need to go to urgent care with Ike.

Ike was very scared, was afraid that putting it back into place would hurt him.... I tried to reassure him, but did know that when my mother dislocated her shoulder 11 years ago she said putting it back into place hurt more than childbirth, so I didn't want to get Ike's hopes up.


We got to urgent care and fortunately it was relatively empty so didn't take too long.

After triage, he went and got 3 x rays, and as he took them and developed them, the technicians showed me the x rays, and even in my untrained eye, I could see that there was a break in his upper arm (x ray showed above), right below his shoulder.

The doctor and his assistant confirmed that it was a break, but not a bad one, and there wasn't an obvious dislocation, but they were suspecting it. They moved Ike's arm into so many different positions, which ended up hurting him a lot, poor kid, to determine whether there was a dislocation, and to return his shoulder to place if there was. They didn't hear a click, but after they finished Ike said he definitely felt better and had more movement.

But to confirm that there wasn't a dislocation (at least not anymore), they sent us for two more differently angled x rays, ones the x ray technician had never actually done before in his life... One was lying down in his back with his arm above his head, and another was leaning back in a weird position and x-rayed from above.
After these other two x rays, they determined no dislocation, and since the fracture was right by his elbow, they don't cast that, or even bandage it, and sent us home with just a simple sling...

Now I have instructions to take him to an orthopedist within the next few days... but did I mention that there's no orthopedists who work here on Saturday and I'm leaving on Saturday night for my trip to Belgium (though my flight is Sunday, the airport is many hours away by bus), so it'll be fun trying to figure out how to get him to an orthopedist, either rush to try to get an appointment tomorrow, or try to find a time my husband isn't working and can take him, or get another relative to take him....

Seriously, never a dull moment.

I told Ike that he's talented, the first person in our family to break a bone (between my husband and myself, many sprains, no breaks ever)... and that his timing was perfect- at least this happened before I went away, not while I was already away, and right before my mother came, so she'd know it was something worthy of an urgent care visit...

Now to just breathe....