I
realize I’m not a wizened senior citizen or repository of all medical knowledge,
but I’ve been here for 35 years now – enough time to make it around the
block. And therefore I knew that if a
foot were broken, you couldn’t walk on it.
It would probably also be black and blue and hurt intolerably.
I’m
not so shocked that I was wrong, thirty-five years is also enough time to
figure out my own fallibility. I’m
shocked that I erroneously believed the “can’t move it if it’s broken” lie so
thoroughly and for so long. Do you know
how many times my three kids have gotten hurt and I assured them their arm,
hand, knee, foot, etc. weren’t broken because they could still move them and
they looked fine? Well, at least one too
many. Stretch has been walking around
for eight days on a foot that is broken in two places.
She
fell down about half of our stairs last week.
Not for the first time, but she did cry longer than she usually did. But, for the record, my criminal one, she was
already crying before she fell down the stairs because she suffered a serious
blow to the head during a pillow fight she got into with her brother and his
friend. (No charges were filed in that
case because the plaintiff hit herself in the head with her own pillow. So glad I didn’t name that one Grace!)
No
matter how many kids are doing something questionable that could end in tears,
it’s always Stretch who gets hurt. There
could be three or thirty of them running at the pool, or jumping on the beds,
or throwing things, but having Stretch take part guarantees the safety of the others
because she consistently sustains the token injury.
After hobbling around for a day or two, she returned to her normal awkward, long-legged, uncoordinated gait. I considered a trip to the pediatrician, but we go for so many obvious illnesses that I didn’t want to throw another twenty-five dollars at them just so they could say she had a sprain or a strain or a flair for drama. And, as I already stated, she could move it, walk on it, and even skip when giving chase to butterflies or cupcakes.
But
today we went in for the twins’ six year check-up, so I had their doctor look
at Stretch’s foot because it was a little swollen and still bothered her
sometimes. She gave me a transparent
look of reassurance as she suggested we get an x-ray. A harmless little x-ray. As a precaution, right?
When
the orthopedic doctor announced it showed two small fractures, I needed a new
kind of doctor that could prescribe me the antidote to being sick with parental
guilt. I failed one of my kids. Again.
“God, please let that be the last time.
So, you know, make me perfect, please.”
I
had three alarmed and very hungry children waiting for a good chunk of the
afternoon on a pink cast to be built from her toes to just below her knee. We tried to distract Stretch from the pain by
discussing what we would eat for lunch.
Or dinner, if our ordeal dragged on much longer. But all the talk of milkshakes and French fries
made our growling stomachs louder than her crying. It wasn’t helping. Instead, we talked about where we might
purchase her rainbow colored flying unicorn kittens instead, since Mommy blew
it and desperately needed to make it up to her.
The
doctor said it really didn’t matter that I waited a week; the breaks weren’t
that severe. I reminded him that it wasn’t
his job to assuage my guilt; he’s an orthopedist, not a priest. “No really,” he said, “it was easy to miss
and it probably didn’t make it worse at all to wait.”
“Oh
yeah,” I countered, “even when her sister accidentally sat on it in the toy
room this weekend or when her brother stepped on it trying to get around her in
the hallway yesterday.” Because she
walks slow, because she’s crippled, because her mother doesn’t take good care
of her!
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