This past Sunday we had our first trip to the emergency room with the Girlie. All is well now, but the story goes something like this...
She woke up around 3:30am and was having some serious trouble falling back to sleep, very unlike her. We swore we could see her second tooth making its arrival, complete with swollen gums. Naturally, we attributed her discomfort to the teething. She woke up around her normal time, but still seemed to be in pain. We held her for most of the morning since she didn't seem to want to be on the floor. Daddy drove to work to log in a few hours, and the Girlie had no trouble taking her morning nap other than a few cries here and there. She woke up from that nap and was undoubtedly still feeling the same-- yucky.
I had lunch with her, she was picking up blueberries, getting them everywhere, and turning everything blue in the process. She seemed normal. Subconsciously, as I later realized, I noticed she wasn't using her right arm. Sometimes she does that, like if she thinks it's stuck in the high chair, so I really didn't pay much attention to it. Then we were playing on the floor and she wouldn't crawl, didn't care to get any toys, and just seemed kinda sad. It was then that I really noticed she wasn't moving her right arm. I tried to get her to grab all kinds of things-- her pink ball, my cell phone, the ruby picture frame she's always going for, but she just wouldn't move it. It was just hanging there limply.
Like most people, my thoughts first jumped to the worst thing possible. Let's not go there. So then I tried to think more positively, but I couldn't come up with anything that was actually positive. Cue more panic. I phoned her pediatrician's office and the doctor on call promptly phoned back. He assuredly told me that he thought she had "nursemaid's elbow" but that we should bring her to the ER just in case. I proceeded to call Daddy, who then rushed home-- he probably wasn't much comforted by the sound of my voice, which hadn't become any less panicked because I had never ever heard of nurse's whose-a-something.
We got to the ER and checked in without incident. All the while, the Girlie is such a trooper that she didn't cry at all, and was so into observing this strange place we were in and looking at new faces. What a sweetheart! The nurses that checked us in all thought it was what the doctor had mentioned over the phone, so we were beginning to feel a little bit better. Having calm, sane Daddy there definitely helped. We are a good team.
After the doctor evaluated her, he was quite sure she had "nursemaid's elbow." He did a simple maneuver with her arm, and it was back to normal. Holy cow. HOLY COW. Something that was super scary turned out to be something easily remedied. She was literally back to normal in minutes. Our friendly, giggling, curious little girl.
I don't really take my time with the Girlie for granted. I try to love every minute of it, even the exhausting ones. It's things like this that reinforce how lucky we are, and how important family is, and how unimportant everything else is. This kid is the best teacher I've ever had.
