SchlegelRock

Tru was gliding across a small “zip line” at the park and fell off and landed on his left arm in the sand and broke his arm.  Hmm, you’re saying.  Didn’t Truman break his left arm at the elbow last Fall?  Yes he did.  Same arm but the break is a little further up and it’s clean through this time.  From what I understand the bone is currently being held on by the tendon that runs down it.

Scott took him to the Emergency Room yesterday around 2pm and called me with word that Tru needed surgery around 4pm.  My mom came over and watched the kids so I could go over and sit with Tru and Scott while we waited for the surgery.  Truman was asleep when I got to the hospital so Scott and I got a chance to talk about what was happening.

I can not tell you how wonderful our experience at Kaiser was.  Everyone, and I mean everyone, was incredibly nice.  Sure the process took a long time but no one was curt or grumpy or at all annoyed with us even though Truman’s surgery was the last of the day and after hours.  That means people had to stay late to fix up our little boy.  I love Kaiser and have never had a bad experience with them but this one tops them all.

Truman went into surgery around 7pm and came out close to 9pm.  The Schlegel’s were there to sit with us. They put 3 pins in his arm to keep the bone in place.  The only scary part of the day was when he woke up from the surgery.  He was thrashing around in the bed , writhing in pain, crying that his arm hurt.  It was so hard not being able to help him.  I asked the nurse later if that was common for kids to wake up that harshly and she said yes.  Once he calmed down he didn’t complain about his arm at all.  No pain meds.  Though they did give him some during the surgery, I guess they just took a while to set in.

He came home last night close to 10pm.  Apparently they don’t keep anyone anymore.  Who knew.   It was so nice to have him home.  It made it feel like I could finally take care of him.  I mean, we’ve had broken bones before.  We know what to do.  Now we’re on familiar ground.  It feels great.

You can see a teddy bear in the pictures and a cut up gown that he wore in the hospital.  They give all the kids teddy bears and when they come out of surgery the bear has a dressing on his wound just like the kid has.  What a great idea!!  I’m telling you, the best experience.  It was magical how smoothly everything went.

Truman doesn’t want to take the Tylenol with Codein because he doesn’t want to feel sleepy so we’ve just been giving him Children’s Tylenol.  It seems to be working.  Truman is in a really good mood and besides favoring his arm is totally healthy and hanging out with the kids.

Whew.  We got our first surgery under our belts.  I’m not saying I want to do it again but it was such a great experience I’m not scared for it to happen again.  We are very fortunate to have such good doctors and nurses to take care of our kids.

Truman goes back on Friday for more x-rays and to get a hard cast put on.  I’ll post more pictures and an update then.

The last picture is my visitors sticker.  In case you can’t read it they spelled our last name:  STHLEGER.  Hilarious.  Even that made it a great experience.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 12:02 pm and is filed under Trips to the Dr. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.