Injured Bower Boys

My goodness, time has been flying by!  I have some catching up to do on here.  Independence day happenings will wait until I am at home with the camera so I can share a few pictures.

This past Sunday Dave tweaked his back and decided to spend the night in Davis with us to give his back some healing time before sitting in his [super ghetto/uncomfortable] car for a 3 hour commute back to work.  I woke up at my normal time and noticed that he was still there.  Poor guy didn't miss his alarm--his back hurt more than before so he decided to skip work that day.  He ended up having to skip Tuesday as well.

Our friend's motorcycle broke down on the weekend, leaving him without any transportation to work in Sacramento so I let him borrow the minivan so he could get to work.  Normally this wouldn't be a problem since Eddie and I rarely drive during the week.

Only after I loaned it to him did I realize that the forecast was for >100F weather all week..so perhaps driving would have been a good idea.  Eddie gets super red and sweaty when it's over about 95F so I try to keep him inside during these super hot days.  Biking to school in the mornings would be okay, but I didn't like the idea of biking him home when it's 104F outside.  So being carless, we took the bus, which is always a big hit with Eddie Pie.  (And as a bonus, it was a Spare the Air day so rode for free today!)

Of course, I also didn't anticipate needing the car to take Eddie to Urgent Care last night for a possible broken arm.  (I should always anticipate these types of things with an active boy child, right?  When will I learn?)

Since Dave was home with a hurt back yesterday during our afternoon off, he entertained Eddie in the living room so I could take a 15 minute cool-down-nap on our bed.  I was sooooooooooo tired and just wanted to rest for a few minutes before getting dinner ready.  But of course, Eddie kept coming in to bother me.  I told him to leave the room and that I'd come out in a few minutes.  I really did only have like 10 minutes left on my phone alarm.  The next thing I knew, he was crying intensely on the floor.  I think he walked right off the bed!  He was holding his right arm, saying that it hurt a lot and that he needed a bandaid to make it feel better.  I took him into the living room, hoping he'd let Dave take a look.  We tried EVERYTHING we could think of to get him to hold both arms out, side by side, so we could compare and see if anything looked swollen.  With his adorable pudgy arms, it was sorta hard to see if anything was actually wrong.

I think Dave and I must be the only set of parents who've never broken a bone, leaving us sorta clueless as to what we should expect. So I ended up Googling the symptoms (breaks can be hard to detect visually and usually don't swell, sprains tend to swell rapidly and bruise and hurt more).  We also suspected that Eddie was being overly dramatic and that if it did hurt as much as he said, then he'd continue to complain and coddle that arm beyond his normal attention-seeking 15 minutes.  It's probably common with most kids: they act a certain way to get some attention and then find something else to do and abandon the annoying/pathetic/crazy/whatever behavior.  After about 1.5 hours of him being only slightly sidetracked from the pain by watching a show and eating popcorn with his uninjured arm, I called Cassie to ask if we could borrow her car.  Dave's [supper ghetto/uncomfortable] car doesn't have functioning air conditioning anymore so I was hesitant to drive us in it since it was still over 100F outside.  Normally his non AC car is fine since he only drives it at night for his commute or in Gualala where it is rarely hot enough to need AC.  Cassie agreed that she'd take him in at this point so I planned to bike across town to her house to get the car.  I decided that it was less hot outside than I thought so we put Eddie's eat in the Saturn and zoomed off to Urgent Care.  By the time we actually got there, I decided that I really should have gotten Cassie's car.  It was hoooooooooooot.

The doctor couldn't get a good look at Eddie's arm because he was being cranky and shy but the doctor was able to narrow it down to pain in the elbow (as opposed to the shoulder or wrist).  I actually wonder if it isn't the shoulder, but I'm no medical professional.  He took some xrays of the elbow but didn't see anything alarming.  I didn't realize that baby bones don't always show up on xrays, though, because they often aren't fully formed or dense enough or something.  So after conferring with another doctor, he decided to wrap Eddie's elbow up in the smallest ace bandage they had and put him in a sling.  I laughed at that because there's no way Eddie would use a sling for more than a few minutes.  It turned out that they didn't even have a small enough sling for Eddie anyway.

So now we're just waiting a couple of days to see how he does.  He was in enough pain when he moved his arm during his shower last night that we gave him acetominophen before bed and again this morning.  Hopefully his adorable little arm is just sore and not actually damaged...but I guess only time will tell.  I'm thankful it isn't broken for a lot of reasons, one of which is that it's swim season and I can't imagine NOT taking him to the pool to cool down and burn off some energy a few times a week.

The doc held a lollipop out for Eddie to grab, in an attempt to make him extend his arm. 

This morning I asked him if I could take a picture of his "owie" to email to Grammy.
He said yes but immediately put on his "feel sorry for me" face. He's mastered it, right?

It's hot again today (104F!) so we took the bus to school again. He looks pretty tough
in his pink shoes, bandaged arm, small hat, and sun glasses. 

I also need to post about Eddie and Dave's vacation to Uncle Edward's house last week...but again, once I have the camera to off load pictures.