arm

The funny part is, we were so sure it wasn't broken. Sure, M complained pretty loudly when she fell off the chair. She cried more than usual. Of course, "usual" is about four seconds, so that's not saying much. Then she seemed to pull herself together, had a lovely time at a little friend's birthday party and took a long walk around the neighborhood with Mama. 

By the time we noticed that she wasn't using her left arm to do anything, well, heavy, it was already edging into bedtime. We figured, if it were broken, she'd be crying, holding her arm, not letting us touch it, not using it to point at the light fixtures or hold Mama's hand. So we put her to bed and decided we'd visit Urgent Care first thing in the morning.

Apparently, things don't move too quickly in Urgent Care on a Sunday morning. We spent some quality time hanging out in the exam room, waiting to hear that our kid had sprained something in a moderate fashion.

Instead, after two (loud, terrifying, and slightly pukey) trips to radiology, the X-rays came back showing two tiny fractures in M's tiny arm. Even the doctor seemed a little surprised at how much the kid hadn't been complaining.

They sent us home with a half-naked toddler in a cute little splint and told us to come back in five days.

We spent the next week trying to keep the splint mostly clean and dry. After its debut at the hospital, the sling never saw the light of day again. M officially hates it.

And now, we're a week in with the "new" cast, which is already looking very, uh, lived in. I don't even want to think about how much it's going to smell in another two weeks when, oh please, we're hoping it comes off again. M eats her meals with a bread bag pinned around her left arm and she hasn't had a bath in an embarrassingly long time. We're doing our best with the whole "clean and dry" thing, we swear.

But let's be honest, people. M is way too busy to bother with any of that silliness.