Saturday, May 23, 2015

The Fawcetts and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

Arm
It's been a rough week for the Fawcetts. Monday our internet service, which had been intermittent, became non-existant. Tuesday, Allen came home to find that a termite swarm had emerged in our bedroom.

And then came Wednesday.

It started off quite nicely. We all met up at Nora's school for her Knee Bowl Art Show and then headed out to dinner. After a lovely meal al fresco, the kids biked while Allen and I walked home. The kids were racing (and playing "invisible football" though I'm not sure how or why) and instead of having them wait at the corner for us to cross, I told them they could go ahead and turn at the corner. 

This was a mistake.

Owen whipped around the corner and Nora, being the adoring little sister, followed suit. Only her training wheels that we've been holding off on removing until the end of the school year (due to her commute requiring numerous boosts up various hills) didn't corner like they were on rails and she crashed. She was a bit bloody and very tearful, so Allen carried her the rest of the way home (despite my attempts to make her walk). Allen gave her a bath and put some bandaids on her scrapes, we read her some books and put her to bed.

An hour or so later she woke up crying in pain. I went an cuddled with her for a while and got her to fall back asleep, but then she woke again in pain shortly thereafter. It was around this time that I started googling "symptoms broken arms children bikes." After her third time waking up crying in pain, I decided to take her to Urgent Care, where they determined in about 15 minutes that she had a small fracture in her elbow, and that she'd be in a cast for about four weeks.

Now, I don't always give Nora credit for being the brave little girl that she is, but she was pretty amazing Wednesday night. Aside from a few tears when they bent her arm for the x-ray (from what clearly was some intense pain), she didn't cry or complain the entire time we were at Urgent Care. In fact, after about the 10th apology from me I was informed that she had already forgiven me and that I was now being annoying. And also that since it was her left hand she could still write and draw.

A very nice physician assistant wrapped her up and put her in a temporary cast and sling (she gets the real one next week after the swelling goes down) and sent us on our way. Since it was now after midnight, we decided Nora should stay home and miss the field trip she had been looking forward to on Thursday. We also decided she'd take a pass on piano and swim lessons and that our plans to go climbing on Memorial Day were now shot. However, we still needed to come up with an alternative for Friday's author's presentation at school that Nora had spent a month working on and centered on hand puppets.

As you can see, we made it work. Now to just get through the next 3 1/2 weeks...


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