Broken Bones

When I was 5 I broke my arm. Or maybe I was 4.

When I was in Kindergarten I broke my arm.

It was all kinds of traumatic. I was at school, on the playground playing on the bars. Then I fell off. And then there was screaming. I remember lots and lots of screaming. I remember people gathering around. Then I remember teachers there trying to give me space.

The story of how I broke my arm has been told and retold countless times. So much so that things I heard later, I started incorporating them into my own memories. While there are things I know I remember other things I’m not sure if I remember them or if I was told them later. I say this because in that crowd of kids was my brother. Just a couple of grades a head of me. Somehow he learned that it was me and was trying to get to me but the teachers kept him from coming to me. And so I screamed.

I can only imagine how that must have been. I imagine my own children in that situation. I think the other ones would be just as heartbroken if their younger sibling was hurt, and traumatized, and mom and dad weren’t around and they were kept away. Breaks my heart a little.

Back to the screaming. Somehow they got me into the office and placed a pillow under my arm. I continued to scream for everything my five year old brain could think of. My mom, my dad, my Nana, my blanket. The list went on. While I screamed the school was desperately trying to get in touch with one of my parents. It was a few years before cell phones made people so easy to find.

As some kind of tender mercy, or blessing in disguise, my mom wasn’t at home when they called. Now I love my mother dearly but she wouldn’t even come into the bathroom if we were sick. She’d stand outside the door and ask if we were ok then tell us to splash our face with water and rinse our mouth out. Had she come in she would have joined in on the sickness. She knows her limits. I think having to take a screaming me with a broken arm to the hospital might have been more than she could handle in that moment. That’s just my speculation and so I call it a tender mercy.

They were finally able to get a hold of my grandmother who quickly came to get me. Somehow my dad was also reached and he met us at the hospital. From there things are a little less clear. Perhaps I was exhausted from all the screaming, perhaps I was finally in shock or perhaps the pain took over and my memory has wiped it away. Maybe a little bit of all of it.

My dad tells the story this way, that once they determined where the break was they gave us two options. Hold her down and they will set it or sedate her and we would be there over night. My dad says he and I talked it over and we agreed that if he held me down I would let them set it. Now, having had five year olds I can kind of picture how that discussion went. Nevertheless that is how it went. And they wrapped me up with an enormous cast. That I kept on much longer than was necessary because the saw they wanted to use to take it off was as big as my head and I remember screaming, “don’t kill me!”

School pictures with the cast. I remember distinctly that I wouldn’t let anyone sign it for the longest time. Finally I relented. And my little brother did this little scribbling thing that set me over the edge.

Why it sent me into a ranting and raging lunatic I don’t know. It just did. Funny the things we remember.

So with all the trauma, and drama, surround my first broken bone I’ve been getting the sense for some time that someone is going to break something. I’ve been mentally preparing having to pick up a screaming child from the school and rushing them to the hospital. I’ve thought about who I would call since David never answers his phone, if I needed help. There are so many mental preparations you can make for something that may never happen.

Imagine my surprise, then, when the first broken bone came with much much less trauma and a little less drama.

Towards the end of our Christmas vacation I started to notice LM favoring her right shoulder. She would cry when anyone picked her up, which is so unlike her. She would even cry when I would barely lift her onto the toilet. My “mom sense” started to notice it more and more and I had that feeling. That one where you know something isn’t quite right. After we got home I made an appointment to take her to the doctor. The morning of she started to act a little more normal. Once we got there and the doctor started moving her arm around she started crying. I then told her, our doctor, that a few years ago I broke my collar bone and had walked around with it for a week before I went and had it looked at. As she felt around her collar bone she looked at me and said, “you know, I think that might be what the problem is.”

We went downstairs for an x-ray then headed home while we waited for the report. It didn’t take long. The doctor called that afternoon to tell us she has a tiny fracture on her collar bone. All I could do is wait and let it heal. We could have gotten a sling for her to wear but that wasn’t a battle I wanted to fight. She was very cautious of using that arm/shoulder that I didn’t think a sling would be even necessary. It was amazing, actually, to watch her. She knew what her limits were and she accepted them, but she also didn’t really let them stop her from doing what she wanted. I’m relieved to say that now, a few weeks later, she is doing so much better. She hardly ever favors her arm now, although I still try to be conscience of it.

So while her story is a tad bit less traumatic than mine, in the broken bone department, it still matters. Because it’s hers.