Norah's 1st Trip to the ER

Considering the fact that this morning, Jerry walked into the kitchen to find that Norah had pushed a chair up to the counter, used the chair to climb onto the counter and was found standing on the kitchen counter -- she wanted fruit snacks, which are in the cabinet -- it was only a matter of time before our little monkey took a tumble that required a trip to the ER.  Today just happened to be that day.

I had taken her to the park, and she was climbing a piece of playground equipment -- for the record, her scaling this particular part of the playground has always made me nervous and I always "spot" her, but today I failed as a spotter -- she lost her footing and fell off.  It was a fall of about 4 feet, and even though the playground is padded with this soft-ish, rubber-y material, she used her left hand to break her fall and she hurt her wrist.

There was a LOT of crying, and normally, she's a tough cookie and bounces right back, but she just wanted to go home, so I knew she was hurt pretty badly.  We got home, and I gave her some kid Advil, and we applied ice and sat her down in front of a movie.  But she was still very weepy and every time we tried to examine her wrist more closely, she'd cry and say it hurt. 

It was a bit swollen, but I didn't think it was bad; Jerry, meanwhile, looked up info online and he'd not only worried her into an arm full of broken bones, but he'd also WebMD'd himself into cancer, so to be sure, I decided to take her to the ER and make she she hadn't broken anything.  He stayed home to worry about the impending cancer.

Our experience at the ER was actually good.  We got right in, no wait, and saw a dr. right away, and he ordered an x-ray, and again, we got that right away.  A nurse gave Norah a stuffed dog, and everyone was really nice and Norah was very brave and very good.  Turns out: It wasn't broken, but the doctor said it was a "severe sprain" with a lot of swelling around the joint (with kids' chubby little arms, it's hard to gage external swelling, so that's why it hadn't seemed too swollen to me).

Anyway, the dr. prescribed the same of what we'd been doing: Advil, ice, and...an Ace bandage:

In the end, we were home by naptime, so for a 1st ER experience, it was a good one -- in fact, I was surprised by how fast, efficient and friendly they were.  But, poor Norah.  It's not broken, but it's clearly VERY painful for her.  She's been babying it all day, and the slightest bump to it sends her to tears.  So, it's been tough trying to entertain her and keep her busy in ways that don't engage her arm, and it's pretty dang hard to keep an active 2 year old from being active.  Even dressing, or undressing, is an "owie" and cause for additional crying. 

But, the upside was that she got to eat plenty of ice cream and watch more than her usual amount of allowed TV, so she enjoyed those parts of her day.

Hopefully a good night's sleep helps, and in a few days, I'm sure it'll be good as new!