The month of July was one for the books. One of those memorable ones that makes you want to cry and laugh at the same time. It started with me getting sick on the fourth of July and then the following Sunday Walter came down with the same symptoms. On Tuesday I brought him in to the pediatrician, who got called away to the hospital so we ended up in Urgent Care. The x-rays showed pneumonia so they put him on an antibiotic and we headed home.
I was still sick, so I went in to our local clinic on Wednesday morning and they gave me a prescription, too. On our way home, we drove past the park and the boys wanted to play for a few minutes. It was a beautiful day and we'd been cooped up all week. Poor Henry was tired of being stuck with two sickies who couldn't play tag! Walter's Motrin was going strong so I figured as long as they weren't running it would be ok...I was wrong.
Henry decided to do the monkey bars and Walter followed. Walter took a flying leap but slipped off the bars and landed on his left hand and arm. When he got up, I noticed his arm was hanging in an odd way but he quickly stopped crying. But when I felt his wrist I called Nate and asked if we could stop by the office and have Grandma Jo check it out (she was/is a nurse). They were waiting in the parking lot for us and we briefly thought he had escaped any broken bones, but after Grandma moved his wrist, fingers and arm around for a number of minutes his eyes welled up as he said, "Grandma, stop. That hurts."
The local clinic told me I could bring him in and they did an x-ray showing his wrist was broken. The good news was that the orthopedic doctor was in the neighboring town and could give him a much better cast than this doctor said she could give us. So, we dropped Henry off at Grandma and Grandpa A's house again and drove to the hospital.
Just as the doctor was about to start putting on the cast, he asked if we thought Walter's elbow was bothering him, "Yes, it looks a little swollen and he said it hurts, but the clinic didn't say anything about his elbow..." Turns out they hadn't done x-rays of his elbow, so that was the next step...
More x-rays
(I'm thinking after the number of times I've worn one of those special aprons this summer, I should invest in one for myself!)
When Dr. S came back, we could tell right away it wasn't good news. He had two breaks in his wrist and his elbow had a break that was a combination of two breaks and would possibly need surgery. He thought we should see a pediatric specialist at Gillette - "Well, that's one hospital we haven't hit this year!" Dr. S put on a temporary cast and we drove home to pack.
Our trip to the North Shore in 2 days seemed unlikely, but I packed every body's bags while planning for a possible hospital stay and a trip to Lake Superior. After lots of phone calls with Amy at Gillette, we ended up seeing another Dr. S on Thursday afternoon. Many x-rays later, she decided that she would put him in a very formed cast, hoping it would hold his elbow exactly where she wanted it. We could go to the North Shore and see her on Tuesday. Hopefully the elbow would still look good, but if not, Walter's pneumonia would have improved enough to do surgery.
Earlier that morning, our pediatrician switched Walter's antibiotic because he was having some bad side effects from it. After getting his cast on, Walter took the first dose of a new antibiotic. Around 40 minutes later we noticed that his abdomen, chest, and legs were covered in hives so we got in touch with the on-call staff at our normal clinic and waited to hear about switching meds again. Thankfully, he took it all in stride.
