Close Call

Last Friday, while we were at my mother in law's house, my girls and their cousins were running around crazy. Eventually this lead to making a fort in the bedroom and then inevitably jumping off the bunk bed. Well, after a while we hear a scream, crying, oowww my foot, tears, drama...what could you expect? Naomi comes crawling out of the room clutching her right ankle dramatically. What happened, I inquired? "I fell off the bottom bunk." Really...you weren't jumping off the top like your sister? "No." Well then it can't be that bad. Off to bed, here's an ice pack for good measure. (Eventually the truth came out...)Well, the next day Naomi crawled all day refusing to put any pressure on her ankle. Sunday we bring her to church where she hopped to class on one foot. One of my friends who works at the hopsital passionately urged me to take her in for an x-ray to make sure she hadn't broken her growth plate. Apparently the rule of thumb for kids is if they baby it for more than six hours, it's broken. I must have missed that day in parenting school because we were going on 36 hours...oops. So Monday I called the Dr.'s office to have him take a look. Well, I haven't brought Naomi in yet since we moved here so that would require a "new patient exam" and the first available time was January 12th..."Will that work for you?" Um, no. So I called around to find an urgent care. Nearest one...24 miles away. Now my paranoia about Naomi's hypothetically broken growth plate in her foot was compounded with the fear that if my child were to ever stop breathing it would take me 37 minutes to get to someone who could help me. I finally resorted to taking her into the Emergency Room in Dallas. No, not Texas, although it may as well have been. I felt a bit foolish hauling her in there on one hip with the baby on the other while she's giggling and not looking like she is in ANY amount of pain at all. She was playing around the waiting room...laughing at Sponge Bob on the TV while I'm casually tring to explain to the receptionist that my daughter really did need to see a doctor. As soon as they called us back, however, the water works started. I'm sure more out of fear than anything else. They did x-rays and plopped us in a room until the ONE doctor on staff got to us. Two hours later were discharged with an ice pack and an ace bandage. No break, just a good solid sprain. One week to the day Naomi started limping around on her foot and today attempted to jump off the kitchen counter...with a crash landing. Easy there tiger. Healing takes a bit of time.