Last Thursday, my brother Brady broke his arm playing in his last football game against the Safford Bulldogs. As it turned out, it was the one game of the whole season that my parents hadn't gone to because it was in Safford. We had family that lived there that went to the hospital with him and I came home from class early to watch the kids while Mom and Dad drove (probably very quickly!) to Safford to pick him up. It turned out that he'd broken both of the bones in his right forearm, as well as displacing them. His arm pretty much looked like an "s" and was going to need surgery to fix. However, there was no orthopedic surgeon in Safford to do the surgery. Mom and Dad asked the hospital if they could bring Brady back home and have the surgery in Show Low and they said yes. Brady's arm was put in a cast to protect it until he could have the surgery and he was released to one of our family members who took him home where Mom and Dad picked him up shortly afterwords and brought him home.
As you can see from the x-rays, it was a pretty bad break. His arm was too swollen to operate on so the hospital had given him some good pain killers to take in the mean time. He was finally able to see the surgeon on Monday and have his surgery scheduled for this past Thursday (November 3). He now has two plates and eleven screws in his right arm.
While Brady was at the hospital getting ready for his surgery, Jake decided to fall down two flights of stairs (about 20 steps), one right after the other, and dislocated one of his fingers. My brother Tye yelled up the stairs to me "Jake located his finger!" and that was pretty much the best thing about the whole experience we were about to have. Jake immediately popped his finger back into place but it was still looking a little funky so we decided to take him to get it checked, just to be safe. On the way to the hospital he started saying that his head hurt, his back as well, and he started yawning and acting like he was really tired. I was worried that he might have a concussion since he'd hit his head a few times during his "trip."
I honestly thought that we would show up to the ER, sign in, wait in the waiting room for a little bit, they would take us back into the triage room, ask us what happened, give Jake and ice pack, have us wait in one of the rooms for a while until they came to x-ray his hand, and then pat him on the back and send him home. Boy was I ever wrong! We got to the ER and I signed him in and wrote on the paper next to the complaint line "fell down two flights of stairs, complaining of head, back, and right hand pain." I sat back down next to Jake and the woman behind the counter suddenly piped up and asked how long ago it had happened. I told her a little less than an hour and she asked how many steps it had been. She then grabbed a radio and called for a neck brace and back board (?!) and pretty soon Jake was taped down and immobilized and giving me the stink eye. He had blood drawn, an IV started, x-rays on his hand, a CT scan, and was drilled on common knowledge things such as what the day was and what my name was to make sure that his head was still working.
I posted this picture of him all taped down on Facebook, not thinking that I hadn't called Vicky to tell her what was going on (I think I was in a bit of shock) since Jake had said we didn't need to call her on the way over. Of course she saw the picture on Facebook (sorry Mom!) and texted right away to see what was going on. So I learned a lesson- never post stuff like that on Facebook without telling important people first!
Anyway, after all of that real life ER drama, it turned out to be just what we thought; a couple bumps and bruises and a finger that had been dislocated and put back into place. They prescribed him some pain pills and splinted his finger for him and told him that he'd probably be pretty sore for the next couple days.
So then we went to Walmart to fill his prescriptions before we came home, hoping that it wouldn't take too long since I was trying to get back for Grease rehearsal at 6:30. Of course it took an hour to fill his prescriptions. However, I was having contractions the whole time (they'd started when they suddenly started calling Jake a level one trauma patient and strapping him down to the back board in the emergency room) and they were getting kinda painful. After we finally got Jake's medicine, we went back over to the hospital to sit with Mom and Dad, who were waiting for Brady to get out of surgery. I didn't want to go home and end up having to come back if my contractions got worse. After waiting a little while with no change in my contractions, I finally just "manned up" so to speak and went up to the labor and delivery floor. I was put on the monitor and given some water to drink. I was having little contractions that the machine was picking up but Aaralyn was moving around so much that they were having trouble recording her heart rate, so we knew that she was okay. After a good little while of monitoring and a call to Wendy, I had my strep b test done and my cervix checked to make sure my contractions weren't doing anything. My cervix was still closed (I didn't really enjoy getting that checked either!) so they monitored me for ten more minutes just to get Aaralyn's heart rate recorded really well and then sent me home, with the instructions to rest, drink more water, and try not to stress as much. We're all pretty sure that the contractions were probably brought on by stress over Jake.
Brady came out of surgery while I was in labor and delivery and went home just fine, he's acting just like normal today. Jake has to keep his finger splinted and ice it every now and then to keep the swelling down. I'm making a valiant effort to drink water and relax. I'm sure everyone would like it if we would all just stay away from the hospital for the next little while!
