A Broken Bone and a Baseball Game

It was only a matter of time.  Having been parents for 12 years and having added 5 children to the family in that time, we knew that it was almost certain to happen sometime:  a broken bone.  Sure enough, it did.  :(

The injury actually occurred two days ago, and this is what happened...

One of the gifts we gave Josiah for his birthday in June was a set of roller blades.  He'd never learned to roller blade before, but he had done some roller skating at a rink here in town.  I figured that owning a pair of roller blades would be just what he needed to get really good at it, and then future skate parties would be lots of fun for him.  Plus, it's great exercise!

Well, he had used the roller blades a little bit since his birthday; but really, life had been so busy that he hadn't had much time to practice.  Our schedule was lighter this week, however, and should continue to be more open until the end of the summer, so on Tuesday I gave him a little pep talk about what all he could use his remaining weeks of summer to accomplish--one of which was to practice roller blading.

Wednesday morning, he donned the roller blades and began to skate around our living room and kitchen.  Of course, once he got fairly comfortable with that, it was time for a new challenge, so I suggested that he could use some of our outdoor space to practice (without getting carried away and zooming down the driveway towards the road!).  He started to go down the steps toward the garage to go out that way, but then didn't feel comfortable with those stairs, so he headed out the front door so he could get to the grass and then get to the top part of our driveway.  But before he reached the grass, he had to navigate two steps on the concrete sidewalk.

This is the part where, if I could, I would turn back the hands of time and do things differently to avoid what happened next.

He fell.

I was in the house when it happened; but apparently his feet slipped out from under him, he sat down hard, and most of his weight went into his left wrist which instinctively reached down to break his fall.  From the sound of his cries, I knew something major had happened; and as I rushed to him, I sent David down the hill to my parents' house to ask my dad to come and check on Josiah.  He did, of course; but from his examination, he concluded that he didn't think it was broken and that it would be sufficient to take steps here at home to care for the arm.  So we iced it, wrapped it, and kept it elevated, and we gave Josiah medicine for the pain.

Then we waited, and Dad very faithfully inquired as to how Josiah was doing.

The rest of Wednesday and all of Thursday, Josiah reported that the pain was significantly less than it had been at first; and we kept him on Tylenol or Ibuprofen, but it didn't seem like the arm was too injured.  However, this morning, Dad checked it again and noticed that when he applied pressure to certain places on Josiah's arm, it hurt him worse than it had on Wednesday right after the fall!  That was alarming enough to Dad that he recommended that we take him in for an x-ray...

...an x-ray that showed a break in both the radius and the ulna, the two bones in the forearm.  They were impact fractures, the doctor said as she showed me the x-rays; and the good news is that they weren't displaced but had stayed aligned very well.  However, the arm did need to have a splint and a sling put on it today and will need to be put in a hard cast the beginning of next week.

Guilt assailed me, as it has so many times since it happened.  I had to ask her: "Did we do wrong by waiting til now to have it x-rayed?"

"No," she kindly assured me. "Sometimes you just have to wait it out and see how it does.  There was no damage because of the delay."

Whew!  At least I can cross one thing off my Regret List!

However, other items remain.  For example...
~ Maybe I shouldn't have gotten him roller blades for his birthday.
~ Maybe I shouldn't have had that talk to encourage him to spend some time getting good at roller blading.
~ Maybe I shouldn't have suggested that he was ready to go outside to do it.
~ Maybe Certainly I should have thought about the difficulty of getting down the front steps and should have gone with him to help him!

The other part of my brain argues for my defense...
~ It could have happened anytime and anywhere.  Jeff fell, when he was a little boy, while running through his house; and he broke his arm just from that.  Josiah's cousin fell off the couch and broke his collarbone.  You don't have to be doing something risky to break a bone.
~ Breaking a bone is not the end of the world.  Lots of people do it (although I never have--maybe because of that, I'm feeling especially bad about Josiah's predicament), and they recover just fine.
~ The way bones can heal is just one of the amazing things about the way God created us!

But to tell you the truth, I still feel so very badly about it and wish it had never happened.

Despite my sorrow, I do realize that it could have happened at much worse times.  For example, wouldn't it have been terrible if it had occurred right before the children's choir tour in June?  Or what if it had happened before Josiah's pottery class?  He wouldn't have been able to make pottery with just one hand.  Or what about his fencing class?  He wouldn't have been able to run fast and participate freely in all their games and activities, if we had been worried about further injury to his arm.  This window of (mostly) unscheduled time here towards the end of our summer break is actually a decent time in which to recover from a broken wrist.

However, it does eliminate swimming, I'm not sure when he'll be able to resume violin lessons in the fall (almost certainly not by the time he was planning to), and those piano lessons I thought I would give him this summer?  Well, that's not going to happen!  :(

Josiah's been a trooper through it all--not complaining, gamely learning to do many things one-handed, and discussing with David which cast color would be the best one to choose.  I am so grateful for his easy-going, adaptable, forgiving spirit!

I haven't taken any pictures yet that specifically show his arm with its splint; but after he gets his cast, I'm likely to do just that.  For now, however, you can get a glimpse of it in these pictures from a much happier event that occurred tonight--a local baseball game!  :)

The boys won free tickets to it through their participation in the library's summer reading program; and, not having anything on the calendar for this evening, we seized this opportunity to go.  Besides, it was a perfect July evening--not too hot, not too humid, just right for a night at the ballpark.  :)

 A bonus was that we happened to see a few friends there, one of whom was Dale (whose face you might perhaps recognize, since he and his family have been a wonderful part of our Christmas celebration several times).

 An unexpected part of the evening was when our boys were chosen to participate in some of the extra activities that were held between innings.  David, for example...

 ...was picked to be in a costume running race.

 Whichever costume won the race--whether hotdog, french fries, or cheeseburger...

 ...would be given that item for free at the concession stand.

 They're off!

 It was such a close race between David in the hotdog costume and another boy in the fries one that it was officially declared a tie...

 ...and they both got to get a free item from the food booth.  :)

During the next inning, we pretty much completely ignored the baseball game and spent the whole time chatting with these young people who were in charge of these extra activities.

 Shav, in particular, had quite the conversation with this guy.

 And then it was Shav, Tobin, and Josiah's turn to compete...

 ...but instead of a foot race, they raced to see who could finish drinking a smoothie first!

 The winner would be given a $5 gift card to Smoothie King (that's the kind of prize I would like to win!).  :)

 The signal was given...

 ...they started drinking...

 ...and Tobin finished first!  :)

 He held onto that gift card all the rest of the evening and would not let me put it "somewhere safe" for him.  I think he was pretty proud of his accomplishment.  :)

 We ended up leaving before the game was over, since we had little ones to get home and put to bed.

 But as we walked out, I paused to snap a couple more pictures.

Ah, baseball!  The quintessential American summer sport!  :)