The inch is down
 

Today was a very weird day. The beginning of extra weird began at about 6pm when inch was running in the yard with one of his friends and he did a face plant and began screaming in a slightly over the top way. It sounded like actual pain, but only fractionally more than the low blood sugar/emotionally intense/end of a long day/ bruised ego kind of scream.

Still it had a hint of authenticity to it. Custom G ran outside and I actually walked over to the screen door and called out.

G carries inch into the house and he is doing his "feedback loop" thing where he hypnotizes himself into some kind of trance which involves his hyperventilating and crying and not making sense. I decide to go to the package/liquor/wine store before they close, figuring G can field this one, he probably needs a 20 minute break from high glee and a snack to stabilize him.

I'm gone about 30 minutes and return expecting hiim to be smiling on the couch, snack and drink in hand explaining why grave digger can crush outlaw. (monster trucks) instead he is exactly as I left him although no longer crying as loudly. G is mouthing "I'll tell you about it later..." implying a new level of crocodillian emotion.

My spidey sense tells me otherwise and I sit down with him and start asking him questions about where it hurts, does this hurt? etc. He is consistent in his story about what hurts and he isn't a boy who cries wolf! so I have no reason to disbelieve him. He says his knee hurts, I can't even say I want to look at it or he screams and he can't turn his foot. He can move his toes.

"how did this happen?" "I fell on some sticks and rocks." I don't see any signs of impact injury, but I point to various spots and ask if they hurt. "Point to where it hurts." He points to a spot where there is no mark. The he says "I was turning a corner really fast..." and I wonder ACL? I get up and he screams again, I touched his toe.

We go to our "as useless as tits on a bull" emergency center only to wait 45 minutes to see a doc who tells us we need to go to the hospital 25 min away. We get to the hospital which we should have just gone directly to (and we know better, why we thought today would be different...)

The staff at this hospital (southern Vermont Medical Center) are fantastic. Really, really superb, gentle, thoughtful, patient centered, caring people. We can't say enough good things about them.(both the inch and the Millimeter were born there)
Xray shows a fracture of the Tibia just below the knee.

Mom feels like shit because she thought he was faking and being a pussy. She really doesn't handle other people's illnesses well at all. Now she feels really bad and Inch is too young yet to realize how far he can milk the guilt.

They give him a shot of morphine so they can splint him. I'm hanging out with him as the shit kicks in and he is fucking hilarious. I see his whole internal dialogue verbalized. I wish I'd ahd a pen and paper. One thing I remember is an orderly comes into the room to empty the trash and as she is walking out Inch shouts after her "My grandmother has a shirt just like that." The he turns to me and says "It has cows on it. She must like cows."

The whole ride home was filled with his perceptions of the world and the conclusions he drew from those perceptions. He's sleeping now, but the morphine should be wearing off shortly.

Poor little guy. What a day.

Sorry to hear about that.

Glad to hear you had a good Radiology experience. If you can get those films on disc, and if the disc has jpegs as well as DICOM images, you could extract the jpegs (or screenshot the DICOMs) and post them in that thread where people post their medical pictures. [/Radiology Geek]

I always heard this story about how my ex mother-in-law thought her son was faking being hurt, because he was honsetly a real whiner, but then it turned out he had a broken something or other, and she felt so bad he ended up getting a bunch of Star Wars toys out of it.

Wow, he must have twisted/smacked it, pretty good.
Fortunately, it'll heal quickly and won't bother him again... until he's 50 and the weather changes. ;)

Glad he's doing a little better now, foot. Is it splinted with his knee held immobile? What a way to start the summer.

feel better, inch!

Damn foots !!!

The Inch has his First real battle scar !!!!

A very long time ago I was playing baseball in gym class and this kid runs into me. I hit the ground screaming, and the gym teacher/coach told me to run it off. It turned out I had a fractured kneecap.

Joint injuries are tough to for anyone to diagnose. The point is that you ended up doing the right thing. If there was no blood, it was reasonable to wait and see if the pain went away. At least you didn't try to have him run laps.:)

... or rub dirt on it and tell him to run it off.

Rich is right - nothing you could have done would have been better than what you did. Let the child calm down, ask questions, it sounds serious so go to the hospital. Bingo.

Don't be too hard on your wife - she's probably suffered more than the Inch over this!

Poor lil guy. Long hot summer for a cast:(

Aww. :( Take care of the inchling. And it's hard for a mother to see her boy get hurt. Give inchmom lots of hugs too. I am sure she would appreciate it.

reassure Custom G that boys do these kind of things ,
Stitches , broken bones , etc,,,,,
All part of growing up .
I have More than my share of Scares and war stories !!!

you've just given yourself a father's day gift--you listened to your spidey sense. it's important to trust your intincts; mom would have figured it out, too--you were just a little faster. this time.

be loving.

OMG, a woman who thinks I said something right.:eek:

Marry me.:p

Damn. There's *nothing* worse than your kid hurting. Nothing.

Sounds like dad was on the job, though. Best wishes to your family, and especially to the inchmeister.

Oh, poor babes. Hope he's feeling chipper again very soon.

Thanks everyone.
@Flint, oddly enough mrs.Foot thought this might be a good time to introduce him to the star wars saga. "You mean the one where everyone is getting blasted by light sabers and explosions and stuff, that one?"
"It's archetypal." "fine."
@Bruce- Like his dad.
@Clodfobble, Splinted until monday when they put the real cast on, yep over the knee, all the kids are doing it.
@LJ, I passed along your advice and he is now watching a movie about the parrots of telegraph hill (OK until the guy started talking crazy vegan talk, relax, inch, bacon is a vegetable.) He also has his new six string in his lap which he strums over the boring parts about "how animals are 'pure'." WTF?
@zip- That's the first one we needed xrays for. God help us if he ever needs stitches.
@rich- no chance of laps. We weren't even allowed to talk about or look at his leg. At the hospital he began with "I don't like my leg." "Why?" "Because it hurts."
Again, WTF? Who thinks "I don't like my leg?" I don't like the pain, sure, but he was ready to get rid of the leg.
@SG A hard on is what got us into this mess in the first place. Um wait, what was the question? Yeah, she was pretty stressed this A.M. she was hurling. "I know you are not pregnant."
@Griff- He's settling into his prince role quite well unfortunately

--must administer medicine back later.--

Medicine for him, or for you? ;)

I am glad to hear inch is ok. It looks like he has good parents too.

I hope your inch is doing better! whenever i think of the inchling I think of Glow-worm, the toy!

hmmm, my post isn't here. wonder which thread (/forum/universe) I accedentally inserted it into?

Summary: Poor Inch. You can get awesome multi-colored cast these days, though :D (harder to sign...:() MomInch, don't worry, you're not as bad as us, Hebe broke her humerus and barely wimpered, and swam and went to gym class, so she went 9 days before the clean break was discovered....

I went 3 days with a broken clavicle.

Poor inch :sniff:

I hope inch feels better soon.

Crohn's disease causes ongoing pain in the small intestine. There's a classic poster for Crohn's disease with the headline: "I hate my guts."

Bwahahahaha!
My Mum said the same thing about her bowel problems, which was even more poignant when we realised they were due to mental and emotional stress in the end.

Foot, if there is anything to see, do take pics and save them. Not for us, for him. Nothing like a trophy photo of an illness or injury to look back on. Yes, my family is a little on the odd side in the way we document it (my brother has a picture of his 3 year old chickenpoxed back thanks to Dad) but this one's a biggie.

He got his fluorescent orange cast today. The doc asked him what color he wanted and he made his hand into an 'O' sign. For Orange. The doc was impressed that he was teaching himself to read (something else transpired there that I haven't gotten all the info on which led the doc to figure out Inch was self teaching ???) and so he told him he was smart enough to try crutches.

I think he's liking the Howard Hughes treatment though.

Thanks everyone for your good wishes.

Comments like that make kids feel extra smart and so more open to trying new and tricky things ...like crutches, which can actually be a bitch once the novelty wears off ;)


Hope the inch soon gets in the swing of them, so to speak. :D

Oooh! gonna remember that one for my bag of tricks. I bet it is especially good when you pretend you think he is out of earshot...

Errr, dad did let him topple over backward today. My bad.:(