In The Hartland: The Big Break

Well, it finally happened. After nine years of parenting, we finally made our first trip to the Emergency Room with our first child with a broken bone...and it all happened while I was out of the country attending the U2 concert the night before in Vancouver. As ironic as it may seem that I cannot even leave the kids alone with Ron for one night without a crazy emergency happening, I know that it could have just as easily happened while I was home with the kids...but it sure makes for a good story, especially since my friend, Kristina, learned that her 3-year old daughter got scalped the day before after her husband let her play with an electric screw driver. Her hair got wound up in the screw driver and, before he knew it, a massive chunk of hair got ripped out of the top of her head. Oh dear. It now makes for a good story for the both of us, but I digress...

It all happened Saturday morning while Ron was attempting to put together his new power washer in the garage while the three kids played in the front yard. Since Lia has recently discovered the art of tree climbing, Logan has followed suit and the two of them were climbing the small, Japanese Maple tree in the front yard. While Logan was climbing out of the tree, a branch snapped, causing him to fall backwards out of the tree. He put his hand out to catch his fall and, bam, broke his arm in the process. He immediately burst into tears and all three of the kids came running into the garage with Lia yelling that she thought Logan broke his arm. After some inspection on Ron's part and some icing, Logan announced that he thought he could go to his soccer class and off they went. Ron first dropped Lia off at her friend, Bella's, house before driving downtown to do some quick, Mother's Day shopping with the younger two before soccer started. While they were there, Logan told Ron that he didn't think he could go to soccer because his arm was hurting so much. So, they decided to skip it and went to the Farmer's Market instead in search of some more gift possibilities. After they got back home, Ron discovered that Logan's elbow was totally swollen and felt very hard and then everything got serious from that point on! Ron raced off to the emergency room with Logan and Ella while leaving frantic voice mails on my cell phone that I still had not turned on after driving back into the United States from Canada.

After a leisurely morning on my part touring a friend's bakery outside of Bellingham and taking a scenic drive back to I-5 via Chuckanut Bay (where Kristina used to vacation every summer as child), I turned on my phone somewhere outside Mt. Vernon and found Ron's frantic voice mail message. I immediately called my parents to find out what had happened since I knew that Ron would not get cell phone service inside the hospital. After getting an abridged version of the story from my mom, I desperately began calling Ron's phone over and over and over again. After a very long thirty minutes, he finally called me back and told me that they were in the emergency room waiting the verdict from the x-rays that had already been taken. Kristina and I immediately changed plans at this point and she arranged for a family friend to meet us off of the freeway north of Lynnwood to drive her on to Sultan to her cousin's house which was where I was originally going to taker her. This allowed me to just continue driving home and I made it back to Puyallup by 2:30. I drove straight to the hospital and by chance ran into Ron in the parking lot as he had come back outside to call me. He took me straight to their little room where I burst into tears the second I saw Logan laying on the exam table. He just looked so small and helpless laying there with his limp arm. I was able to smother him with some tears and kisses and words of encouragement before whisking a very tired and hungry Ella home for a late lunch and nap. One and a half hours later, they returned home with Logan wearing a partial cast in a sling. He indeed had a break...in fact several breaks on his elbow, one big break on one side and many little breaks on the other side. Since his arm was so swollen, he needed to wear the partial cast for two days until the swelling went down. At that point, Ron was told that we needed to take him into an orthopedic clinic in Tacoma to get his real cast.

So today Ron was able to take the day off work and be the one to drive Logan into Tacoma to get his real cast. They had to take two more series of x-rays to make sure that he didn't need surgery and to make sure that his wrist wasn't broken. Luckily, the doctor discovered that it was a 'no' to both of these possibilities. Although the x-rays were very painful for Logan because he had to move his arm into several positions, he was very brave through the entire process. He picked his favorite color of blue for his cast and was home before dinner time with a box of popsicles and a skeleton key chain in hand. Overall, I have been very impressed with my little boy. He has been such a trooper through this entire ordeal, barely complaining at all. He has only woken up in the middle of the night wining a couple of times, but I think that the real cast will protect the break better than the partial cast and it will help everything to not be as painful. I hope and pray that Logan will have a speedy recovery and that we will get this darn cast off before the swimming season is in full swing this summer! We are so proud of our Logie boy and how brave he has been through it all!