My heart is still pounding. About 15 minutes ago, we heard an earth-shattering shriek from Eastin's room and went flying up the stairs. Eastin was on the floor, staring at her arm, and her soccer friend Erika was standing beside her, staring at her. They had jumped off of the top of Eastin's bunk bed together. Yes, Eastin was told when we first bought the bed that no one was allowed to jump off the top. Apparently, that important instruction slipped her mind.
When I reached down to help her pick up her arm, I SWORE I saw it bend slightly in the middle of the forearm. Oh, no! Oh, no! It's broken! I thought. Of course, I didn't say that out loud, but I'm sure my face said it all.
However, as we all calmed down a bit, we discovered that although the arm hurt like crazy, Eastin could move her fingers. And eventually she tried moving the whole arm and could do that, too. Before long, we were all laughing about it, including Eastin. But I still felt sick to my stomach.
It's amazing how the mommy-brain kicks in at moments like that. As I sat on the floor holding her injured limb, I found myself talking calmly. But my mind was racing: the minor-emergency center up the street . . . keep Erika calm, tell her it's OK, it's not her fault . . . something flat and solid to rest Eastin's arm on in the car . . . an ice pack . . . Keith can take Erika home . . .
I think it was less than a minute, really, that we sat there before we figured out that her arm wasn't broken and she was going to be fine without professional intervention. But in my mind, I already had friends signing her cast.
She's got an ice pack on it now while they watch a bit of "The Little Mermaid", before we take Erika home. (I add that fact just to give me an excuse to revel for a moment in the music of this show. "Each little clam here know how to jam here under the sea . . each little snail here know how to wail here under the sea . . each little slug here cutting a rug here, that's why it's hotter under the water, yeah we in luck here, down in the muck here, under the SEA!!!" Really -- great stuff.)
In any case, she seems to be fine. Deep breaths. I'll probably be fine, too, in another hour or so.
2 comments:
I always thought it was "each little slug here cutting a rug here" ha!!
You were a good mommy! I was baby-sitting many years ago and the kid was playing and ended up biting his tongue so that he had a huge gash in it. Long story short, there's nothing you can really do for that sort of thing, and mouth injuries heal fast, so my goal was just to keep the kid calm until his mom got home. I finally got him distracted and convinced he was not going to die and then the mom gets home and starts FLIPPING OUT and getting the kid all worried and riled up again. She spent three hours in an emergency room to learn what I'd already figured out, that it wasn't a big deal, there was nothing you could do, and it would heal eventually. Anyways, the point being that even though you were THINKING the worst, you weren't expressing all that fear and you were keeping calm for Eastin!! Thank God for moms like you!!
Argh! You're right. CUT a rug, not KICK a rug. You see how stressed I was . . . :)
I'm going to go in and change that right now cuz it's going to annoy me.
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