Broken bones and Dehydration… stories of parenthood…

So, Marek has been a healthy and happy for most of his childhood.  As an only child, I think he is more mature (sometimes) than others his age and he is pretty conservative with his risks.  This is probably why he has never had any major injuries.  Until this summer.  Bleh!  His first baseball game was May 24th.  He struck out the first inning and the second inning while up to bat, with a pitch count of 3 and 0, he took a wild pitch.  He blocked the pitch with his left arm.  Owwie!  He couldn’t even take the base, they had to sub a runner.  We found ice and waited.  Out for the game.  The next day it still hurt, badly.  So.  Change of plans, off to the local med clinic for an x-ray.  Happily, not broken just badly bruised, “maybe it is a green stick fracture we won’t know until 72 hours.  If it is still hurting Friday and he still needs the splint come back.”  Well, Friday rolled around and he was feeling pretty good, no splint, so we didn’t go back.  Yah!  Memorial Day Weekend he hefted himself onto our big bed – leapt and twisted – loud popping noise and lots of crying!  Owie!  Re-injury more ice.  Happily we didn’t have many baseball games so we focused on ice and Ibuprofen.  Ball practice resulted in pain, no batting and dissatisfaction.  Wah!  More ice.  He did magically make it through the super cool archery course. This meant missing ball practice which seemed to be the only action that was hurting.  We had fun and iced when we got home.  The next week we had ball practice again.  Bummer, more pain.  SO… we went back for another  X-ray.  Broken!  Bleh.  However, the doctor at the urgent care provider said, “You’ll probably be fine with the splint.  You might want to call your regular doctor for a follow up.”  Like, really!  An 11 year old boy, heavily active fine with a splint!  SO!  I call the regular doctor and talk to the nurse.  She says, “You need to see an Orthopedist!”  She set up an appointment for us.  Only potential flaw is that this was on a Thursday and the ortho appointment was for Monday!  Meanwhile, we were off for the weekend on our State 4H Geology Field Trip!  Wah Hoo!  Picking up rocks, hanging with the peeps all with a broken and splinted arm.  Hah!  This brings me to part two of the adventure!  Off we go to South East Kansas to pick up rocks, minerals and fossils!  Oh, My!   All weekend, I watched him instinctively use his left arm.  He slammed the sliding door on the van (OWW!!), rough housed with his friends (owwie!), went swimming in the hotel pool (mistake!) Oh, and while driving around through the middle of no where in 96 degree heat.  Found lots of cool specimens.  We drive around with a 5 gallon cooler of iced water and lots of drink mix ins.  Every single stop, myself and Julie (my friend and the driver) ask all the children if they need to refresh their cold water!  Marek consistently said he was fine.  Ooops!  Not so much!  Around 6pm we were back at our base, the Labette County High School and Marek emerged from the van saying that he felt sort of sick.  “Maybe I’m carsick….”  So, I let him lay on the nice cold, shiny high school floor for almost a half an hour.  Sadly, he didn’t really bounce back.  Still feeling sick, so I began the questioning.  Turns out he hadn’t been drinking water.  DEHYDRATION!!!  I made him drink a small bottle of water.  Shortly, he puked it out.  More water, he chugged it because by then I was telling him we would go to the hospital for an IV if he didn’t drink.  Yep, he puked that up, too!  The usual inclination to avoid the hospital led me to allow him to lay on a table in front of the bathroom while sipping power aid and a Coke Zero.  Nope, he puked again.  SOOOO…. by now it is 8pm.  We are both filthy, smelly and covered with a film of sweat and dust plus some watery puke.  One of the other families loaned us their car to go to the Parsons Hospital.  (Such NICE people in 4H!!  Very helpful!)  He puked on the loaned blanket in lieu of the car seats… yep!  Made it to the hospital and POOF diagnosis of DEHYDRATION and remedy of IV!  UGH!!  I really just wanted to be angry at him.  However, he was really, really, really, really sick!  I was totally worried about him.  Freak out!UGH!  IV time… Marek was very traumatized by the one and only other IV he had had – the day he was diagnosed with Diabetes.  This one went much more smoothly.  He felt immensely better within a few minutes.  A sublingual anti-nausea medicine, twenty minutes of IV fluids and an orange juice.  Yum.  However, an IV drip for a small diabetic kid has to be delivered over a long time – two hours actually.  Yawn!  Finally, at midnight we were free to head home.  Did I mention the $100 co-pay for the ER visit?  More parenting dilemma!  REALLY!!  All you had to do was drink water!!  AAAHH!! But wait, you could die from dehydration – FEAR and CONCERN!!  So… we both survived the adventure and went on to enjoy hunting for rocks, minerals and fossils on Sunday.  (note the splint on the left arm…)          We finally make it home on Sunday afternoon.  Tired and not DEHYDRATED!  Yay.  Time for that fabulous Orthopedic appointment.  Woo Hoo!  He has repeatedly injured it all weekend through normal usage so I was really set to push for a cast.  No need!! The PA at the Orthopedic office said, “We usually recommend a cast for protection.  He is healing just fine. the .”  Well, duh!!!!  My mom skills told me he needed a cast.  I felt so bad that it had been broken and undiagnosed.  Poor little boy!  No such thing and toughing out a broken arm!

Thus ends the saga of parenting and medical issues!!  Marcus and I both said things like “you might just have to play through the pain”, “toughen up, you can do it”.  BAD!  GUILT!  I let my kid walk around with a broken arm for at LEAST a week or more!  Then, I somehow let my kid get dehydrated on a trip.  Totally preventable.  Could have avoided the wasted time and the $100 expenditure.  But where does parenting responsibility end?  How does it work when your kid is old enough to know better?  The old adage, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.” springs to mind.  This was an exercise in natural consequences for Marek.  Painful and frustrating to observe but happily - everything turned out fine.  The broken arm could have been much worse.  Whew!  Pretty sure he will never again allow himself to become so dehydrated.  Felt pretty stressful for a few days but things are settled down again now.