So every once in a great while, I get fed up with my slovenly behavior and decide to clean. Since this is a rare occurance, I take the opportunity to clean my entire house as if my life were dependent on passing a white-glove test. It's a little obsessive-compulsive thing, this binge and purge cleaning cycle I go through. Anywho, so yesterday was Cleaning Day. I started upstairs and carefully worked my way downstairs, covering every inch. This took several painstaking hours and just as I was rounding the homestretch, dusting the bookshelf in the living room, I look out my front door and see an older neighbor lady I'd never met before, approaching the door. Through the storm door, she says, pointing to the playground 50 or so yards away:
"Is that your little boy down there?"
My first inclination when I hear this statement is, goddamnit...what has he done? He has ran over this poor old womans flowers with a scooter or taken a shit on her lawn. She's coming to have a "talk" with me about my poor child-rearing skills. But, no. I follow her pointing finger with my eyeballs to the playground, where indeed I see my son.
"Oh! You mean the one lying facedown in the dirt with the red shirt on? Yep, that's mine."
Old lady: "I think he's hurt. We saw him fall off the swing. My husband's down there with him...we didn't want to try to move him."
Because from my vantage point, I can't see him moving. I immediately went into panic mode. Oh god! He's dead! I frantically place my naked toddler, who was happily helping me dust, onto my hip and march down to the playground, where I assess the scene. My son is lying sunny-side down in the mulch and dirt, immobile. His shoes have flown off in some kind of protest to his defiance of gravity. One lies next to his head and the other 20 feet away. Again, I'm thinking 'shoes don't just fly 20 feet away unless someone's dead', but then he moved. Thank you baby jesus, he's alive....and WAILING. Not just crying, WAILING. I might even call it WHALING because it kind of sounded like someone was killing a large sea creature.
I ask him if he can move. No he can not. Where does it hurt? His arm! BADLY!
I ask, "How are your legs? Do they hurt?" (The legs don't hurt.) "Well, we need to get up so we can get you to the emergency room."
"I CAN'T MOVE!" (WHALE!!!)
I help my poor, freshly-paralyzed child to his feet, organize his transient shoes and thank the neighbors. I notice that he has a bloody nose and that the ARM HUUUUURRRRTS! He can't move it and is splinting it with his other arm. I get him home where he decides he wants to sit in the garage on a pool floaty and WHALE while I get myself and Naked Baby dressed. Mind you, the process of getting the both of us dressed only took about 10 minutes, but apparently when you have a life-threatening arm injury, 10 minutes seems like an eternity...and he let me know this by announcing (screaming) to our entire town, "MOOOOM, WHERE ARE YOU?!?! IT HUUUUUURRRTS! HURRY UP!"
At this point in time, I'm positively certain that he has snapped his arm bone in half, so I rush him to the emergency room where they set him up in a cozy triage room and give him an ice pack...which, of course, doesn't help at all and only makes it HURT WORSE! The nurse announces that she is going to take his vitals. He panics:
"What are vitals?!"
She explains what "vitals" are and he calms down...until...she begins to put the pulse monitor on his finger. He flinches:
"What's that?!" She explains what it's for and he is finally at ease.
Meanwhile, The Baby That Is No Longer Naked is screaming, "HUNGY! HUNGY!" I inform her that it is a bad time to be hungry, but she doesn't care. The Patient is also hungry, so the nurse is kind enough to give us graham crackers and peanut butter to keep everyone quiet. I administer crackers until the radiologist, Tequila, comes in to take pictures of The Boy's arm. Yes, her name was really Tequila. Because Tequila's job description includes contorting painfully injured limbs into creative positions in order to take photographs, she did just that...which led to more WHALIIINNNGG!
After 30 minutes of waiting (faster than Walgreen's!), our pretty arm pictures were developed and....
IT'S NOT BROKEN. What?! Take those pictures again! Did you hear him screaming? I want a do-over. This has to be a compound fracture!
Nope, he's fine! Here...have a sling and some drugs and give us $100!
Thank you, doctor.
