Nursemaid's Elbow

Here's something you probably didn't know (unless you've had a similar encounter or you're the kind of person who looks up EVERY possible ailment your child may suffer from). Until 2 1/2 or 3 years old, your child's elbow sockets are not really "set." Does this also apply to other sockets in the body? Maybe? The other sockets were not relevant to my day yesterday, so I don't know. Plus, it's not called Nursemaid's Socket, is it? But that doesn't mean there isn't a Nanny's Ankle or Au Pair's Shoulder or Eddie Murphy's Daddy Day Care Hip. Who knows with these things. The bottom line is that children are undeveloped and prone to having stupid things happen to them that they are inadequately prepared to cope with or communicate about.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So, yesterday, Norah was playing. And then she abruptly stopped playing and started shrieking. Inconsolable shrieking. Now, I have to admit. My first instinct is to assume that she's being a drama queen. Insert Crying Wolf metaphor here and use it as an example to all children everywhere forever. Were she not such a drama queen, I would have immediately known that something serious was happening. If Gabe made noises like this, after making sure that I didn't need to stem blood loss, I would be making a beeline for my car keys because a trip to the hospital was immediately necessary.

But that's not the case with Norah. When she cries, here's how my immediate response goes:

1) rush into the room to make sure someone isn't bleeding
2) make cursory check for sharp things sticking out of weird places in her body
3) see where Gabe is in the room--if he's hiding under a blanket or behind a chair, he's responsible
4a) if Gabe is hiding, come up with some sort of admonishment/punishment that will be ignored and/or forgotten in two minutes
4b) if Gabe isn't hiding, tell Norah to stop crying/shrieking/screaming/whining, come up with some sort of admonishment/punishment that will be ignored and/or forgotten in two minutes.
5) warn Norah that if she keeps overreacting to everything that, before long, I will completely fail to take her seriously when she's making noise (I'm serious, I'm that kind of person, and I will make this kind of argument to a two year old despite the fact that I KNOW it won't make a difference--and I only do it so that, at some undisclosed point in the future, I can say "I told you so."

And that's more or less what I did this time. There was no blood. There was nothing APPARENTLY wrong with the arm that she seemed to be complaining about. Thus my assumption became that drama queening was going on. I held her for a minute, tried to convince her that she was fine, then put her back down to go back to playing.

Usually, at this point, she'll see if she can milk the sympathy for a few more minutes with some more sobs and whines or complaints, but when that doesn't develop, she goes about her business. This time, though, she went into the dining room, collapsed to the floor, and continued to cry.

Something wasn't right. So I went in and checked her over more closely. There really wasn't anything obviously wrong, but she kept favoring her left arm. I poked and prodded a bit but couldn't find anything obviously the matter. Then she demanded a Dora band-aid, so I got one out. I asked her wear it hurt, hoping that would help me figure out what was the specific problem. She looked at her arm to find someplace to put the band-aid and pointed to it. It was a spot of dried chocolate milk about midway up her forearm. Clearly NOT the problem, but I put the band-aid on there anyway.

For the next five minutes, I continued to evaluate her level of ouchiness. Was she REALLY hurt or was she just overreacting again to a relatively minor injury? There was obviously more than nothing going on, but I didn't want to take her to the ER for a bit of a muscle bruise. I am not now, nor will I ever be, one of those parents who take their kids to the hospital for every little injury.

Have I mentioned that when I was nine years old I had an accident with a metal grinder? I removed the top half of my right index finger down to the right knuckle--including part of that knuckle. I can't bend my finger all the way down anymore, and the fingernail is still a shambles. It never grew back properly. Do you know how I was treated for this injury? I held it under cold water for a half an hour, then Neosporin was applied to a piece of gauze, wrapped around the finger, then taped to a popsicle stick so that I couldn't bend the finger. I never set foot in a hospital or doctor's office to have it looked at.

I am not willing to take things to that extreme. I am too paranoid of infection and permanent damage. But I have to admit that I lean more towards the "if bones aren't sticking out, then you'll be fine" mentality (which applies, because, with my injury, my bone WAS sticking out).

This time, while her bones weren't sticking out, she did appear to be losing the use of her arm rather quickly. Within five or so, she'd stopped using it entirely. It was hanging limply to her side, and every time the arm was moved she screamed.

So I loaded her up into the car and took her to the hospital.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: fuck the American health care system. I'm sorry if this offends anyone who works in the health profession. I've got some bad news for you. Your boss is a fucking idiot. And if you truly believe that our system works and is awesome, then you are a fucking idiot too.

If a screaming two year old child is brought to the admission center, then that child needs to be admitted immediately unless there has been a zombie outbreak or some kind of calamity and every doctor and nurse in the facility is cleaning up that mess. Here is the order of priorities for immediate admission:

1) People with open wounds--with those who've received bites from zombies topping the list because they might soon bite someone else and spread the affliction.
2) People who are vomiting uncontrollably or suffering from some other devastating ailment that would spread disease or otherwise put out the rest of the people in there.
3) People who are screaming from the pain, even if there isn't an obvious ailment (with small children topping the list because they can't say where it hurts, so it's impossible to say how severe the ailment/injury might be)
4) People who are having any other problem.

This, I imagine, is probably how the priority list is SUPPOSED to work as it is. And, I have to admit that we were admitted before some other patients who had been waiting in the lobby for a longer period (including a parent of a three year old who FREQUENTLY mentioned how angry he was that he'd been waiting with a three year old for three hours already--but, and here's the important part, there was obviously nothing wrong with this three year old who was running around and being a nightmare all over the lobby the entire time I was waiting there, and this parent should have been called a fucking idiot and sent on his way).

But, all the same, I was forced to sit with a two year old on my lap for a little over an hour in a packed waiting room before we were brought back to a room. Norah cried almost the entire time because every time she shifted around, she moved the arm and it set off new pain. And she shifted around A LOT during that time for two reasons.

It was about 110 yesterday. And in the hour that we were in the lobby, I was "fortunate" enough to be sitting right next to the thermostat. While we were there, I watched as the temperature went up two degrees. It was hot in there, and Norah is built for winter. She was a sloppy, sweaty mess. For that matter, I'm built for winter, too. So I was also a sloppy, sweaty mess. On top of that, "sitting still" ranks right up there with long distance running on the list of things I am NOT good at doing. So every few minutes Norah and I were squirming around uncomfortably, and this set off a new jag of screaming and crying. After the first fifteen minutes, it was very nearly setting off jags of screaming and crying in me as well.

Then we were brought into a room where we waited for another half an hour--though at least we were both spared the admonishing looks from other patients as Norah screamed her way through more waiting.

Next came the x-rays. This took another half an hour. More screaming, especially when they had to twist her little arms around to get the best picture.

Then back to the room for more waiting. Another half hour of it. During this time, Libby arrived and was shown to our room. But, by the time she got there, Norah was better.

That's right. Better. Chipper, happy, playful, normal. Better.

After the x-rays, Norah was cuddled up on my lap in the room, periodically crying and in misery. Every little move set her off again. And then, quite inexplicably, it didn't anymore. Out of nowhere she used her previously useless hand to remove one of the stickers the x-ray technician had given her. And that was that.

(We still had almost an hour of waiting left, though, before we'd be released--fucking idiots.)

The doctor explained to us about Nursemaid's Elbow. Sometimes, I guess, the sockets on the arms of small children can be pulled out of joint. The name it's given, I assume, is from harsh, British-style nursemaids who yanked children's arms to get them to do what they are supposed to. The fact that this has not happened to us before and this ailment was completely foreign to me is surely a testament to my parenting methods. I have NOT yanked my children's arms out of socket. So, hurray for me!

And just as easily as they come out, they go back in. And, at some point, she twisted the arm just such a way that it popped back into place.

So that was that. Yet another failed attempt to make use of our medical profession, and yet another weird ass thing that can go wrong with small children. And if this happens to your child . . . well, it won't help you one single bit knowing this is a possibility because, let's face it, you're NOT going to start twisting your screaming child's arm around to try and pop the elbow back into place. But at least you won't be surprised when you feel stupid two and a half hours into your hospital visit when your child starts acting normally again. You will feel like just another fucking idiot in a system filled with them, but we'll both know that you're really not (unless you are, then screw you and stop making the world a terrible place for the rest of us).