Fifteen minutes later, I signed out my son from preschool and went onto the school playground to pick him up. He was on the jungle gym with some classmates, laughing and having a good time. I stood talking to a teacher as he laughed and ran back and forth on the equipment. Then he turned and jumped from too high a location and my heart nearly stopped. I couldn't see how he landed, as he jumped off the opposite side of climber. I dropped his lunchbox and my keys and ran to him. He was howling in pain and clutching his arm. I scooped him up and ran to a chair under the awning and looked at his arm. I didn't see anything though he was howling with such an animal intensity that I knew something was wrong. I scooped him up and ran for my car, the teacher trailing me with the lunchbox and keys. I managed to get him into his car seat and drove like mad to the ER. I called my husband and told him to meet us there.
We got there at 5:15 p.m. but didn't leave for home until 3:05 a.m. It was really one of the worst nights of my life, second only to a night in December of 2006 in the same hospital, with the same boy, though this time he was still a part of me in utero. The next morning, my water broke spontaneously and he made an early entrance into the world, six weeks earlier than anticipated, and that is where the ride of a lifetime began. I swear, this boy is going to put me in an old-age home way before my time due to fright. I suppose what happened between 5:15 p.m. and 3:15 a.m. last night is a story best left for another time and place, but the end result is a splint made of plaster covered by an ace bandage, which will be followed by a fiberglass cast next week after the swelling goes down. It was heartbreaking to have my baby sobbing call my name to make the pain stop and not being able to do anything other than try to comfort him with soothing words and holding him tight.
I'll be sure to post cast photos once he gets it -- he has already decided that he wants a white, purple and green cast with glitter to look like Buzz Lightyear -- which is truly a choice offered to him including the glitter. There seems to be something very wrong with a society that has that option when millions of children sharing the same planet don't even have clean drinking water but that discussion is also for another time and place.
I'll catch up with other photos I've done over the past few weeks, but for now, this will have to suffice. This was my boy long after sunrise, making up for missed sleep during the night.