What a long weekend we had! Our three day weekend ended up is turning into an indefinitely long one, but for a price...

Late Monday night, when the kids should have long been in bed, I was cleaning the kitchen, Big Lance was in the shower, and the kids were wrestling in the living room, getting the last of their pent up energies spent before bed time.  I guess they were playing some sort of game on the couch where one "launches" the other off the couch (not sure how that works), and Lance Jr landed wrong on the floor.  He was in pain and his upper arm looked funny, and we thought he dislocated his shoulder.  We all packed into the truck and drove in the snow to the medical clinic on base, just to find out it was closed.  Great.

We took the twenty five minute drive to the hospital south of us and waited in the ER.  Luckily it wasn't busy, but there is always a bit of waiting to do regardless.  He got xrays taken and sent off, at midnight, to a orthopedic specialist on call for his input.  When the ER doctor came back, we saw this:

My baby's arm was broken, and broken pretty bad!  I had no idea! The specialist who reviewed his xrays ended up coming in so he could take care of it himself.  He said he has a two year old at home, and if he were in our situation, he would hope that the specialist would come in to take care of his little boy, regardless of the time.  He won me over right there.


Lance with his homemade curtain sling, waiting on the doctor

 Lance was being so brave and hardly cried, as long as he didn't move around much.  Once it came time to splinting his arm, however, the doctors had to give him Tylenol with Codine and a shot of Morphine, and yet he was still in agony (though quite funny conversationally later in the night).  The specialist splinted his arm and torturously adjusted it so the bones would sit properly, and Lance was so strong and brave the whole time.  We set up a follow up appointment for Monday to see how we are coming along, and to hopefully get rid of the bulky splint and put a brace on his arm. 

He is doing great despite everything.  He broke his upper left arm, which is a pretty rotten place to break a bone.  For one, he is left handed, and he kept thinking of all of the things he would have problems with (the very first thing he said once we found out it was broken was "how am I going to read a book??" How cute!).  And our main issue, which is improving with time, is how hard it is for him to move about, specifically getting up from a reclined or laying position.  I never realized how much you use your arms or shoulders to move, even if just sitting back a little bit in your chair.  I keep having to support the middle of his back as to not move his arm, but he is managing movement better and better with time.  We are in the midst of trying to sell our old full sized mattress, so the past two nights we all slept in the living room; Lance Jr on the main couch, Alex on the love seat, and Lance and I on the floor on the mattress - all in case Lance wakes up and needs help moving around.  It broke my heart his first morning waking up; he had a panic in his voice when he said "Mommy?!" and I think he forgot that he broke his arm the night before and didn't know why he couldn't move and why he was in pain.

On the bright side, he has found out that he can manage playing video games quite alright :)


Luckily, this week we are having a snow storm and school has been closed every day so far.  I've stayed home the past two days and am off tomorrow as well to take him to the doctors to get a referral back to the orthopedic specialist (dang this red tape...), so we are enjoying being lazy and lounging around.  And I'm really enjoying  babying my baby :) 

Also, Alex has a new nickname.  Alex The Bonecrusher.  She seems to like it :)