The Phone Call

Friday morning I was in the midst of teaching pre-school at my house when the phone rang. "This is Whoever from the elementary school. Leah fell of the bars at recess. She says her neck hurts so we have it immobilized and we've called an ambulance." Ok, I'll be right there. I relayed the message to Lars before I really internalized what they had said. I strapped on my running shoes, ditched Lars with all the kids and took off to the school. We just live behind the school so it was faster to run than drive. In the two minutes it took me to get there, I said a little prayer and felt peaceful, but a million "what if"s" were racing through my head.

When I got there, Leah was laying underneath the monkey bars with the recess monitor stabilizing her neck and the principal towering over her. He had a soft spot for Leah since she had just given the announcements over the loud speaker that morning. About a minute later the EMT showed up. They asked her a bunch of questions-she answered correctly, wiggle your feet-she did, squeeze my finger-she could, does this hurt-no, no, no, yes! no, do you want to wear my sunglasses-yes. They said they didn't think her neck was broken, but just to be sure, they put a neck brace on her and strapped her to a board and wheeled her to the ambulance on a gurney. Leah was whimpering, but not making a huge scene so I wasn't too concerned. We got to the hospital and the doctor came in and checked her over. He concluded her neck wasn't broken but wanted x-rays of her right shoulder.

At that moment, Lars showed up with Heidi. One of the pre-school mom's took Naomi and Emilia when she picked up her son. Lars went back with Leah for the x-rays. The doctor came in and showed us Leah had broken her clavicle (collar bone). It was a clean break all the way through. Then he said they didn't set that bone, and of course you couldn't cast it, so they gave her a Snoopy sling and some Tylenol and plopped her back in bed. Two hours had elapsed by this time and Heidi was loooooong overdue for a nap. Heidi was crawling around on the floor, pulled herself up to standing by the bed, fell over and smashed her face on it. She immediately got a huge blue bruise right next to her eye, so I decided to take her outside and wait before any more damage could be done.

Lars and Leah came out a few minutes later and after a quick trip to Burgerville, all seemed to be right with the world. We got home and Leah wasted no time milking her injury. Naomi, can you give me that sticker because I have a broken bone? Yaya, I want to watch that movie because I have a broken bone? Dad, can I sleep on the couch because I have a broken bone?

Things had kind of calmed down a bit when we got another phone call. "This is Dr. Junn. The radiologist just reviewed Leah's x-rays and he can't rule out that her femur (upper arm) might be broken as well. Please bring her back in for more x-rays if she is complaining about any pain in her arm." We didn't take her back in because we wanted to wait it out and see if there were any complaints. I think we might bring her back in today or tomorrow just to be sure. Probably don't want to take any chances on that one.