Up at 6:45 AM to get everything ready to head out to Kingston. Stephanie is being admitted for another session of high dose Methotrexate. If all goes according to schedule, she should be out on Friday and then back in the following Tuesday for her final spinal tap of this CNS Prophylaxis phase.
By 2:30 PM she’s gotten her bed, her IV is running and I head back to Trenton to meet Michael’s school bus at 3:50 PM.
After meeting him, he heads off to a friend’s place down the road to play and I lay down because of headache (eye ache to be exact) that I’ve gotten over the day. After about 10 minutes, Michael’s friend is at the door telling me that Michael has fallen out of a tree and has hurt his arm bad (just what is the medical definition of bad?). By the time I get out there, his parents have slung his arm and are walking him home.
Turns out the kids were climbing trees and sliding down branches. One of the branches Michael was on broke and he fell.
At home, I take a quick look at his forearm and it looks OK (used my XRay eyes). Finally convince him to take off his sweatshirt … that’s when I see his elbow … that’s not right (5 years of Engineering required to make that call on the spot) … that bump shouldn’t be there!
Off to the Trenton Hospital emergency … four XRays and three hours later, the verdict: “that’s not right” … it had taken me 5 seconds to make the same diagnosis (remember, 5 years of Engineering). Seriously though, of the two bones in his left forearm, one was dislocated at the elbow, the other broken at the elbow.
The only thing that Michael could say was “no needles” and “no surgery” … unfortunately, he had picked up quite a bit from Linda and me talking about Stephanie. He did however, proclaim that he never wanted to touch another tree for the rest of his life … guess forestry is out of the question.
Since there is no local specialist in Trenton, guess where he they referred him to … do I know where Kingston General Hospital is!! Ha. So, a quick call to Linda and Stephanie to let them know that I was coming back, and by 7:30 PM, it was off to Kingston again, with Michael this time.
Once there, they put a tournequet on his upper arm, pumped up his lower arm with anethetics, popped his bone back in, slapped a cast on, more XRays, and by 2:00 AM, he was in a bed, just two rooms down from Stephanie … good we can take advantage of the two for one family rate! So for that night, Linda slept in Stephanie’s room and I slept in Michael’s room.