All Better!

After just four weeks, Scotty had his cast removed yesterday! He was a total champ at Children's Hospital, where that cast saw is quite loud, and the vibrations can be quite upsetting. There were a couple of older children who were wigging out, but he just sat there.

I have had two experiences with Children's Hospital, and I've been completely overwhelmed both times. They are so gentle and in touch with the kids. I always leave so grateful that they are there, and even more grateful that I've only ever needed them temporarily. Because watching the parents with the truly sick kids? It wrecks me.

Every doctor, nurse, receptionist, security guard, night custodian, it doesn't matter who you are on staff, you were apparently hired because of your great affection for, and tolerance of, all things "child". They also manage to staff amazing pediatric specialists, which does not hurt when you are there to see an orthopedics surgeon. Twice. For two different kids.

But the Cast Room has been quite an interesting place. When Tommy went, a fellow so gruff and so uninterested in Tommy's angst, went to work on his cast without so much as a "Hey Big Fella!" It was so out of character with the DisneyLand quality of the rest of the experience that I actually speculated to Erik, after the fact, that he may have been on loan from a "regular" hospital. But then yesterday, it was sort of the same deal. Not Scotty's guy, who was young and sweet-natured, and not the quiet older gentleman who was on the phone in the corner, but the other guy, who was my age, well, he was another story. As I concentrated on the tribal tattoo peaking out from our nurse's scrubs just above his wrist, I listened to the other nurse telling a six year old boy, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is you come over here and sit down and the hard way is we bring in lots of people to force you over here and hold you down." While the parents pushed him by the shoulder toward this brute, I snuck a peak at the guy in the corner, on the phone. He seemed non-plussed as he watched the scene. My guy raised an eyebrow, but that was it. I think he must have started out nice, but it only lasts about a minute. Maybe it's the nature of the Cast Room, where kids are completely freaked out, and you could easily spend all day trying to coax them and that never does work anyway? Maybe the more you coax the more they hunker down? Maybe firm threatening is the only way that really works, in the end?

But back to the arm! He's so proud of his arm! And he was very upset with the dry skin that we found underneath the cast. He did not like it. He did not like it one bit. Fortunately, I have a magic potion called Curel and so the bulk of the whining was short-lived.

They gave him a removable cast-splint. He is such a Hendrix though, that he wore it for about two hours before announcing that he doesn't like it, and then he took it off and never looked back. He hit a toy truck with it once, but other then that he hasn't given it a second glance. My dad has set his own broken nose on the course of a motorcycle race, removed his own foot case after three weeks because it was 'hard to work with it on', and took a mere two days off work when he cracked his ribs.

Erik and I come from two different worlds! In my world, you broke bones, tore ligaments, and had multiple injuries and stitches from climbing trees, riding motorcycles, or getting run through barbed wired fences from by particularly stubborn ponies. I take the same approach with our own kids...I see them doing things that make me feel anxious all the time, but it's an adventure, life's an adventure, and sometimes you get hurt. Of course you try to minimize that, but you can't live in a bubble!

In Erik's world, you don't get hurt. Period. I think his dad broke an arm bone, once, and everybody in the family still talks about it like it was The Day The Earth Stood Still. It's not like Erik is a whimp, I mean the guy had a knee surgery that would have put me over the edge, but he sees the world as a dangerous, foreboding place and it is his job to make sure that his children are safe, at all times. Bring on the bubble! Except it would be easier to just medicate Erik, because both of our kids have had stitches, broken bones, and more cuts and bruises then I could catalogue.