First (and hopefully last) broken bone!

So we were at Cedars of Lebanon on May 27th with my friend Donna M. and her grandchildren. She had taken us on a lovely hike explaining to us about the cave and all the foliage that surrounded us. Afterwards, we headed to the playground to let the kids play on the playground. Riggs immediately went on the monkey bars and out of the corner of my eye, I saw him drop. Now, please know that he is a master of the monkey bars. Coach Shawn says he is the best one in K-Smart at school. Sometimes he drops at home and he just runs off!

But this time was different. He didn't land on his feet. He was more on his back. Later on he said that his friend was in the way at the end, so he dropped. As I picked him up, he was shaking. Shock, I guess? I knew that this was bad and he was really freaking out! He could move it, though not well, and I was hoping for a sprain.

As time went by, it got hot, hard and more painful. This was at 11:27 a.m. and the doctor wanted to see it before x-rays. Of course, they didn't open back up, until 1 p.m., but they let us in at 12:45 p.m. to see us. After she saw it, she said that it was broken, and sent us to Summit for x-rays. She said that if it was a simple break that they could cast it, but if it involved anything more complex that we could go to Vanderbilt. The x-rays hurt like (you know what) evidently, because they have to move it certain ways. It was quite the ordeal. One minute after the x-rays were done, the tech sent us back to her office. That meant it was bad, and she agreed as she nodded her head. It turned out to be a break in the radius and ulna, and one of them was displaced. So that meant they had to put him to sleep. It was hard enough to get x-rays while he was conscious, much less moving it back!

So Jay met me, and we were off to Vandy. We got there at about 3 p.m. and there wasn't a dry hair on Riggs's head. They went ahead and started him with morphine since he was getting an IV anyway and it was the first relief that he had since 11:30. He was nervous about being put to sleep, but the pain had subsided somewhat. The worst part for me was when they put him to sleep. I held his hand, and there were tears running out of eyes, and all of a sudden he wasn't there, with his eyes still open. It was the worst thing for me to see. Then they asked us to step out of the room. I hated it. Even though there were about 5 doctors and specialists and 3 nurses on there, I hated it. But after about 5 minutes, they asked us to step back in before he awakened. Then he started to blink and he saw me and it was better.

After the final x-rays, we got to leave at about 9 p.m. He woke up in the night in pain, but the pain medicine we gave him quickly worked. Now over a week later, it's hard to keep him down. They asked us to help him be still (no running, jumping) for the first 10 days, so it will set and then he can do more activity. On Monday we will go back, and hopefully we will get a half cast, maybe waterproof? He has recently noticed that his world had been shaken with not playing, swimming, baseball, etc...Hopefully it can come off before we head to the beach on July 4th! We will see. So that's it...hopefully our last experience with a broken bone!