Got a call on Tuesday from my the principal at my daughter’s school. Upon hearing his voice, somehow I just knew. What? I didn’t know, but I knew it was bad. I braced myself. I’ve always been a worst case scenario kind of person. If you think it, you can prepare for it.
For a while, I’ve been feeling this sense of dread. Something is going to happen. Something is going to happen. My daughter fell on the playground and she was in the medical room at school. Something happened to her arm. I talked to her on the phone and she sounded off. Distant. Distorted. Her personality gone.
She wasn’t crying. She said her arm hurt. She told me a kid pushed her. She wouldn’t let anyone touch it. The ice pack they gave her did nothing.
So it was an emergency, which meant a long night was ahead.
If her arm was broken, she’d be crying. It’d be bad. It’s probably just a sprain, a fracture, I thought. But the dread just lingered. I packed a bag for the hospital full of snacks, drinks, comfort items. My husband took her to emergency and I stayed at home with my son.
Turns out, she broke her elbow, but there wasn’t an orthopedic surgeon to do the full assessment, so she was given a cast and sent back home. My mother-in-law came in the morning to look after my son and my husband and I went, watched a bunch of doctors try to realign her arm, put a new cast on. She was in a lot of pain and we were helpless. I felt shitty, having to make choices. Just having to watch.
They took an x-ray, but the bone wasn’t quite where the doctor wanted it. He said they could get her into the operating room right away. We said okay. I watched my daughter struggle to hold herself together when they cut the cast off with that terrifying saw. The doctor held the whirring blade against his arm to assure her that it going to cut her, but the thing still looks like a threat, roaring, the blade spinning. I held her hand, but it didn’t do much to quell her fear.
Lots of things were scary. She tensed when the nurse put the bands around her wrists. Her shoulders tightened when I answered pre-screening questions for her. I watched her get an IV, which easily could have been more horrifying if the anesthesiologist didn’t have a British accent. She was great. She face on her IV port, made it feel like we were on an episode of Peppa Pig.
I did my best to be a mom. I did my best to assure her.
“I was here when I had you,” I said. “I know it’s scary but everybody here knows what they’re doing. They’re nice. They’re going to make it better. You always tell me how you wish you could just close your eyes and go to sleep at night. When they wheel you in there, you’ll get to feel what it’s like, to just instantly sleep. And then you’ll wake up and it’ll feel like nothing happened.”
I don’t know if it helped or not, but she got through. She walked out of the hospital with two pins in her elbow, a new cast, a dose of morphine.
So we’re home now. I’m keeping her out of school until the worst of the pain eases.
I give her the medication the doctor told me to. I’m always worried. I constantly give her hugs and tell her that I love her. She’s annoyed with me at this point. She’s 9 and doesn’t want to make a big deal of it. I’m just a mom who wants to hug her forever. And yet at night, she wants me to sleep in her room. I’ve slept on the floor for two nights now, my back aching. Last night, she asked me to read her a book like I used to when she was 5. It’s been nostalgic, but I’ll read over the words, the stupid princess stores, their passages engrained in my skull, filling me with a humbling annoyance.
A taste of the past, which is all a parent really wants, right?
For now, I’m tired. My back aches. I haven’t written much, but it’s okay, considering that I’m currently reading Columbine for my WIP, and, well, in terms of the things that one can dread, a broken elbow is nothing.
My kid had a rough night last night and I had to keep going to her bed, helping her move all her pillows around so she could get comfortable. It’s the most useful I’ve ever felt, honestly. As difficult as it is, I’m doing my best to savor it.
Once this is over, I’ll just have something new to dread.
You’re amazing! Hope she gets better soon.
Hey Becca, you're a great mom it's no fun having someone you care about in pain and you can't do much else but be present. I know she appreciated all your care