Samantha has been very determined to hurt herself over the past few days. First, she jumped off the trampoline, but got her foot caught in the springs so she was hanging upside down by a foot when Shaylee heard her screaming. Luckily, her leg was just fine in the morning. The next day, she decided to climb the tree, but slipped and ended up sliding down the tree bark on her stomach. Later that night, she fell off the front porch, but jumped right up and announced that she was okay.
Finally, on Friday night, she was jumping off our neighbor's trampoline when Shelby reached out her arms to catch her. Unfortunately, Sami tripped over Shelby's arm in mid-air and landed on her hand. She said she heard it pop so I thought maybe she had popped her elbow out of joint. She did a lot of screaming and crying, but that's normal when she hurts herself. So I got her out of her clothes and gave her a bath and put her in bed. For the next two hours, she called me every 15 minutes to tell me how bad it hurt.
By this time, it was midnight and because of our lack of insurance, I didn't want to take her to the ER. But when I looked at her arm and it was swollen and feverish, I knew it was time to go. I decided to take her to Wee Care Pediatrics in Layton because they are open 24 hours. I paid $65 for the office visit and they called us back to see the doctor. He looked at her arm and said it was definitely broken, but he would need x-rays. Unfortunately, it was 1am by that time and their x-ray tech left at midnight. So he said we could either go to the ER, or he could put a splint on it and then we could bring her back in in the morning. We opted for the splint. The doctor was so nice, he wrapped it up and refunded our $65.
It was a long night, a very long night. We got home at 3am and I made a bed up for Sami on the couch so she could watch tv because it seemed to distract her from the pain. I hoped that she would be able to fall asleep, but it didn't happen for more than a few minutes at a time. Finally, it was morning and we could go over to IHC to have it checked out.
If you look at the x-ray on the left, you can see a fracture in the bone on the left, as well as a small peice of bone that is not connected to her elbow next to it. Both of those bones were broken. The doctor spoke with their on-call orthopedic surgeon and he looked at the x-rays and said that it was a pretty serious break and he doesn't deal with kids that young. So we were told to go to Primary Children's Hospital.
This is a picture of Sami on the way to the hospital. Her sisters felt so bad for what she was going through, they made her a comfy little bed in the backseat, complete with her teddy bear.
In the Primary Children's ER waiting, waiting, waiting, and waiting to see a doctor.
Still waiting, so she decided to get comfortable while we waited.
Getting ready to "try" to get her bone back in the right place. They hooked her up to a bunch of different monitors and gave her an IV. She complained more about the IV than she did her broken arm.
In this picture, she was fully sedated and the doctor (in green) was getting ready to wrench on her arm. It was painful to watch. The big machine on the right is a portable x-ray machine so that she could bend, push, and squeeze on Sami's arm and watch all at the same time. The only male in the room (besides Chris) was this really funny doctor named Dr. Nelson. He kept us all laughing everytime he came in the room. And he seemed to be going 100mph. At one point, Chris said "I can tell you are really busy" and he replied "No, I'm just really hyper!" And he was! He was our theatrical entertainment for a while. He told Sami that she was very creative because her arm broke in a very unusual way and place.
Unfortunately, the bending, squeezing, and pushing didn't work. So this is Sami getting ready to go into surgery. Is she just tired, or is she a little loopy? Probably both.
The doctors told us that they were going to use a rod to align the bones and then pull the rod back out; but that there was a small chance they'd have to make an incision and go in to fix the bones. It turns out that she did have to have an incision, just like we thought. The surgery took about an hour and a half and they said it went very well. This is Sami, sleeping peacefully, after her surgery.
The doctor's wrapped up her arm in another sling that she will have to wear until next Monday when we'll take her back in to get her real cast. (How cute is that pink & purple tape that they kept the IV in with?)
Surprise, surprise...look who else broke their arm (in almost the same exact place) and got to hang out at Primary Children's with us. If you look at Carter's right arm, you can see the swelling near his elbow. They lucked out and got to go home at 1am, us not so lucky...It was 3am when we finally left the hospital.
***Notice how Sami is smiling in all of her "awake" photos. She said she didn't want to look like a dork, so she smiled through the pain.
Just to add insult to injury, Sami started vomitting yesterday afternoon and couldn't eat or drink anything without it coming right back out. I called the hospital and they suggested that we stop giving her the Lortab because it has that effect sometimes. So we stopped, but the throwing up didn't...until finally this afternoon. She seems to be doing better now. She's drinking Gatorade and eating dry toast and hasn't thrown up for about 4 hours. Hallelujah!
