It is the end of the evening for the Carother’s family going away party and Andy comes out the front door with little Matty bear laying in his arms and he says to me, “He hurt himself.” He sat him on my lap for a few minutes and Matty didn’t even move, he just held onto his arm and it hurt. He couldn’t tell us where it hurt, just that it hurt all over and if you tried to move his arm he would begin to violently shake. Deep down, we both knew that he broke it. So, we told all our neighbors that we needed to go and they quickly helped us pack everything up. Jenni and David were here and we laid Matty down on Papa’s lap while we got ready to go and he fell asleep. We found this really strange because it wasn’t even 8 o’clock yet.
We decided to take him to Pediatric Afterhours over in Palm Harbor. Even though they weren’t crowded, we still ended up being there a couple of hours. They x-rayed his arm a half-dozen different ways, but they couldn’t find the break. They even x-rayed Bruce. The only indication that it was broken, was that the fat pads around the elbow were inflamed. This told us where the injury was, just not how bad it was. Now we also understood why Matty couldn’t tell us exactly where it hurt. He would point above his elbow, below his elbow, and in general all around the middle of his arm. They splinted him up and sent us on our way. Matty slept with us that night and every night for the next week. 😦
The next morning I called into Pediatric Orthopedics affiliated with All Children’s and St. Joes, and lucky for us they were able to squeeze us in at the Tampa location right before lunch. At the appointment, they removed the splint and took him for another x-ray. This time they only needed to do one. There it was, right through the elbow. You can see it in the middle of the x-ray, it looks like a gray shaded upside down hockey stick. The fat pads are also still visible.
Off we went into the casting room. Of course we paid for the waterproof one. Matty picked green as his color. No surprise there. He didn’t cry when they wrapped him up, you could tell though that he was uncomfortable with them touching it.
Matty smiling because they are all done.
That night we are at home and Emma is wanting to play. The doctor told Matty no playgrounds, parks, running, sandbox, beach, etc. He got upset and cried. Well, when he cries he always covers his face with his hands and the cast scraped the skin right off. Bad day for our little buddy.
Three weeks pass by and we head back in for our follow-up. Although Matty never complained about his cast, he was a really good sport about it, you can’t fake the happiness that he showed when the man was cutting it off. They took another x-ray and gave us the all clear to go thumbs up! The doctor told us to expect him to be stiff and sore for at least a week, but that we should just give him Tylenol for the pain and it would work itself out. He has to wait a week before he can play on the playground….but that doesn’t mean we can’t go to the beach!
Mountains! Beach! or Both!... 