The First Broken Bone
Around 5 pm today, Anna called come in tears after tumbling off her bike by the local swimming pool. Since Finnur had the car, I biked to her and found her sitting on the sidewalk, being looked after by a mom who’d seen her tumble and lent her her phone.
As I arrived I thought her arm looked like it could be broken, but Anna claimed to be able to move the arm fine, and then did so without wincing much at all, so I figured it was just a really really nasty bruise. So Anna rallied and then rolled/biked her way back home on her bike. Thankfully the way home is all either level or downhill.
When we arrived home, we checked in with one of our neighbors, who happens to be a nurse (one of three that we know of in the street!). She had Anna try to move her arm in a certain way (twist it) which Anna couldn’t do on her own. The consensus was to go to the ER to have her properly checked out.
We arrived at the ER at 17:45 about an hour after the initial tumble. We got super lucky because the waiting room was essentially deserted and didn’t have to wait more than 5-10 minutes before the triage nurse could see Anna.
Anna in the ER waiting room, cooling her arm with our ice pack. It was a good thing she was wearing a helmet when she fell!
Anna’s arm without the ice pack. Pretty darn swollen. Our neighbor was the one who instructed Anna to keep her arm up like that because I had no clue. Thank goodness for knowledgeable neighbors!! 🙂
The triage nurse took a quick look at her arm and quickly fetched a splint before sending us up to the second floor for a doctor’s consult and radiology. Here we’re in an exam room waiting for the doctor to show up.
We waited for the doctor for 10-15 minutes. She took a quick look at Anna’s arm and then sent her off to radiology for an x-ray. Here Anna is sitting by the rather spectacular x-ray machine. Yes, when we entered the room, the receiver table was vertical on the left side of the room, while the emitter was on the right side of the room, looking towards the receiver-table. The radiologist then touched a few buttons and the gear smoothly arranged itself to this configuration. It was very cool. 🙂
Back by the exam rooms, the doctor showed us Anna’s x-ray pictures.
See the broken bone? Yeah, that one on the right.
The other angle shows pretty clearly that something was not right. In fact, the doctor told us they’d have to pull the hand to set the bone properly, which required local anesthesia.
Here Anna is, exactly an hour after we stepped in the door, having just received a neuro-blocking shot in her armpit to numb the entire injured arm. They also put in an IV just in case she’d need a sedative or painkiller. But she remained calm throughout so they didn’t give her anything.
We had to wait for 20 minutes for the numbing to work properly. After Anna reported her arm to be ‘heavy’, the doctors and nurses set to work, and by 19:26 the cast was on. The setting of the bone was done by an older doctor, who’d apparently done this many many times.
After the cast was on, they rolled Anna back to radiology to take a couple of x-rays to make sure everything was as it should be (even though they’d used a scanning machine while they were setting the bone). The doctor liked what he saw, so he told us to come back next week for another set of images to make sure all is ok.
At 19:43, two hours after we stepped through the door, we were all clear to leave. It should be noted that by the time we were leaving the ER, traffic had increased quite a bit, and a least two if not three young girls in soccer costumes had hobbled in through the door. I should also add that due to the policies of our ‘evil’ socialistic government, we didn’t pay a single krona for this trip, because ER services for children are free of charge (I think?). I’ll add an update if we get a bill in the mail. 🙂
So yeah, Anna has to keep her cast on for three whole weeks, which will be interesting. But it could have been worse, and at least she injured her left arm and not her right so she can still write in school etc.
Meanwhile, at home, Finnur was hosting two of my brothers and their families along with my mom, because my oldest brother is about to move to Japan with his family for a year! We returned just as they were all leaving, so we’ll have to squeeeeze in some hugging goodbye time this Sunday, if only for 15 minutes. Heck, I didn’t even manage to take their picture!!
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