THROW ME A BONE!

My Matthew is a curious fellow. He’s smart. He’s adorable. He’s curious. He sometimes drives me crazy with his curiosity. Curiosity killed the cat they say. In Matthew’s case, curiosity killed his foot. David had taken a TV that the kids had in their family room entertainment center and placed it on a small shelf on the floor so that the sun wouldn’t shine on it. Matthew was trying to plug a Playstation into it on Wednesday morning when he tipped it too far forward and KAPOW! It fell on his foot.
I’ve been joking with God recently. Hey…”Throw me a bone”! Um….I don’t think this is what I had in mind. But God has a sense of humor. And so do I, I’d like to think. So…this is what it looked like… The one on the left.

So I called the nurse at our clinic. She tells me to just have him elevate it and ice it and by the afternoon we should know if it’s something more serious than just a bruise. I did. And it didn’t get better. We hum and haw (and call nurse friends) all evening about whether or not to take him in. We finally decide that all they would end up doing for him is stabilize the foot and send him to an orthopedic Doc on Thursday. We wait for morning.
Morning comes. I call our clinic. They can’t (or won’t) get him in. We find an orthopedic Doc, but we don’t have our insurance information yet (new insurance) so we’d have to self pay and then submit a claim later. At this point we don’t care.
We take him in. They have me pay first. 220 smackeroos. Ouch. They X-ray his foot and take him right to the casting room (didn’t even bother with an exam room). The Doc comes in and confirms that in fact he broke the bone right above his big toe. He tells the casting girl what he wants and away she goes.
Matthew is really fine throughout this process….

UNTIL….
She goes to wrap the casting material around and apparently when the glue activates it gets HOT warm. He did not like this but he tolerated it. When the Doc came in to examine the casting lady’s handiwork he decided that there was too much cast extending beyond his toes and asked her to cut some off. She grabs the tool that they use to cut casts off and starts it up. This thing looks (and sounds) scary to ME. She gets about ½ way through cutting off the top of the cast and Matthew starts FLIPPING OUT. I thought for sure that she’d cut him with the way he was flipping out. The Doc comes in and checks everything out and clears him to leave. He’s still screaming. IT HURTS WORSER THAN BEFORE!!!
I carry him out to the truck. Still screaming. He’s more upset than I think I’ve EVER seen him. Even when he had surgery to remove his tonsils and put tubes in his ears. I take him back in and tell them that I’d like them to take a second look at the cast and see if everything is ok. They take him back and the Doc comes in and looks at everything and says that we just need to take him home and give him some Tylenol with Codeine which they had given me a prescription for. OK.
I take him BACK out to the truck (stillllllllll screaming..hasn’t stopped) and we drive about a mile to the drive-thru at CVS to drop off the script. I get half way through a line of about 6 cars when I look down at the script and realize that they’ve written RYAN (last name here) on the script. RYAN??? Ugh. I’m on the phone with Hubby at the time and ask him if he wouldn’t mind calling the Doc back and asking them to write me a new script with MATTHEW’s name on it and have it ready to pick up.
I drive BACK to the Doc’s office (Matthew’s still screaming…..) and while I’m waiting for them to get it the girl that cast him and wrote the script apologizes for the mistake. I’m in tears at this point and she has the nerve to admonish me for crying because I’m just going to upset him even more. I’d really like to murder this nurse right about now.
So I get the right script, go BACK through the line and drop it off. Eric agrees to pick it up on his way home from work. Yay for small miracles. I know I have liquid Tylenol with Codeine at home so I make up my mind to just get him home and get him drugged medicated so he will shut up feel better. Amanda calls me at this point and reminds me that I could go through the McDonalds drive-thru for dinner. Perfect. I pull into the McD’s drive-thru line and ask the STILL SCREAMING Matthew if he wants anything and he SCREAMS says no. I decide that I can get Mc’D’s AFTER I’ve drugged him gotten him comfortable at home, so I pull out of the line and head to the road for the 25 mile trip back home.
He screamed the WHOLE WAY HOME. We pull up in the driveway and I get out of the truck to go around to get him and open the door. He quietly asks me if I’m going to carry him. He had stopped screaming. ????????????? Seriously?????????? I wanted to kill him. I had begged with him all the way home to calm down and stop screaming. I had reminded him to breathe. I told him how sorry I was that he was in soooo much pain. I felt his pain. And all along he could have probably controlled it???? ARRRRRRRRRRGH!!!!!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Anyways….he’s doing well. He’s on crutches and I’m making him use them. I refuse to carry this child everywhere. I think that this experience will make him stronger. I pray it will have the same effect on me as well.