Anna's broken wrist

At the end of July, we were at some friends' house for the evening, and sweet Anna plummeted from the monkey bars on their swing set and broke her wrist. That's the journalistic version (you know, lead with one sentence that says the kernel of the story.). Here's what really happened: we were about to go up on our friends' deck to eat some dessert, so Joel turned to Anna and Katherine and said, "Don't climb on the monkey bars while the adults are not down here to help you." Moments later, while savoring juicy morsels of strawberry pie with whipped cream, we see Anna land on the ground underneath the monkey bars and start crying. I give the Joel "the look" which means, 'I'm not dealing with her overreactive self; it's your turn' and he tromps down the stairs to give her a pretty severe reprimand for directly disobeying orders. After delivering said reprimand-and, I must add, hearing no indication from Anna that she's hurt- he leaves her to sulk and whimper through her humiliation alone and comes back up to finish his dessert. We assume that in just a few moments Anna will have bounced back from her traumatic experience and begin clambering around on the play equipment again. Not so. Soon we begin to hear wails coming from below us. At this point we start to think that perhaps something more is going on. I run down and pick her up and she starts crying about her arm hurting. We set her down in a chair, add a little ice pack and try to ascertain exactly how badly hurt she really is. Is she just being dramatic or is this real? After a good solid 5 minutes of the same high-pitched wail and few pokes on the arm that elicit an even higher pitched one, we decide that this probably calls for a trip to the ER, because, of course, this has happened on a Saturday night JUST after the after-hours clinics have all closed. So, we drop Joel and the others off at home (a 7 minute trip during which Anna falls asleep!) and I head off for the ER. I should point out that this is poor Anna's 3rd trip to the ER. The first was when she was about 6 months old and got croup so badly they felt they should see her. The second was when she fell out of my arms on Christmas day and cut her mouth on a stool leg (worst day of my life so far). And now this. You know it's not a good thing when you say, "This looks a lot like the room we were in last time," and your child says, "No, Mommy, this is a different woom. The other woom had a ladybug on the door." Next thing you know, she'll be calling the doctors by their first names and asking about their families. Anyway, so they feel it first and say, yep, it's broken; let's see how bad. Then they do an x-ray (for which, I must say, Anna is remarkably cooperative and still). It appears that both bones just above her left wrist are broken, the bigger one a little worse than the little one. They put her in a brace and a sling and tell us to come back later that next week for casting. (They like to let the swelling go down before they cast it.) So, the following Thursday she receives a bright pink (surprise, surprise) cast above the elbow. Of course, she's left-handed so everything is hard for her but she manages with great skill and aplomb. Throughout the whole process she has been brave, stoic and just very calm. The x-ray technicians are amazed at how still she sits for her x-rays and the nurse who used a small circular saw to cut off her long cast was agog at how calm she was. "I've NEVER had a kid this age sit that still while I was doing that!" So, Anna, for all the daily drama we tend to get from her is the brave warrior in times of emergency. We've been very proud of her and she is ecstatic that in just 5 days she gets her second, shorter cast removed. I'll be ecstatic, too. Bathing a kid with a cast isn't a barrel of monkeys (well, actually...) and it'll be nice that she can run in the sprinkler without worry, if we get any more days like that. I've heard people say I should keep her cast for posterity. I don't know. Won't it just be one more thing to pile up in the closet? The jury's still out on that decision. Maybe I should. It may well be the only cast she ever has...we could only be so lucky.