Flying Barrel Of Monkeys

Today should have been a day of celebrations with friends, but instead we had an adventure at the emergency room. It started with a birthday party at a facility filled with inflatable bouncers, slides, and obstacle courses. MonkeyBoy used to be afraid of all of these things, but he’s grown out of that fear in the last year and he was looking forward to attending and playing with his friends. The first bouncer the kids raced to was the giant slide. Four girls ran up to try it and MonkeyBoy chased right after them.

He started down the slide feet first and on his tummy – he likes to slide on his tummy for taller, scarier slides.

All was well until he hit the part of the slide where the pieces seam together. It’s the spot in the pictures where the blue turns darker. Unfortunately for MonkeyBoy, the seam was not flush and his tiny little leg got caught. It flipped him up and over so that when he landed, he was on his back/side and head first. Here’s a blurry shot as he flips – blurry because I was watching the event unfold through my viewfinder and rushing to get the camera down so that I could hop up on the slide and rescue my baby.

I’ve never heard him cry so hard before. And I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was wrong with him, until I eventually tried to set him down. He wouldn’t stand on his right foot at all and would crumple up on the floor. We sat at the play place for about a half hour waiting for the crying to subside and trying to figure out what to do next. We had a second birthday party to attend, but I didn’t want to take him there if he couldn’t walk. While I had MonkeyBoy up on my shoulder with his head turned, a friend moved his foot and leg around and MonkeyBoy didn’t let out a peep, so we didn’t think that it was probably broken. But MonkeyBoy wanted nothing to do with the inflatables place so I decided that I’d pack us up and we’d head to party #2.

In the car, he kept up his crying and intermittent “OWIE!” yells, so instead of heading to the party, I drove to the Urgent Care facility nearby – an offshoot of our local hospital. I told them that I wasn’t sure if he had a sprained ankle, a broken bone, or was just really freaked out from the inflatables but that maybe he should be checked out just in case. I handed over my driver’s license and insurance information and started the paperwork to get him admitted. Meanwhile, he crawls off my lap and hobbles over to some children’s toys in the waiting room. Then he decides to climb across three chairs! At that point, I wasn’t sure he really needed to be there and was having serious mama doubt. I didn’t know what the right thing to do was. Did I go ahead and have him checked out, even though he was crawling over the chairs and not exhibiting any pain symptoms? Or did I leave and risk him having a broken bone?

I ended up erring on the side of caution and going ahead and having him checked out. MonkeyMan had been at party #2 waiting for us, so he arrived soon after we’d been ushered into a room. He went with MonkeyBoy for X-rays and then we waited for results. The Urgent Care place was wonderful with us and gave MonkeyBoy a popsicle to eat while we waited.

The X-rays didn’t appear to show any fractures, but the doctor wasn’t 100% certain and wanted to immobilize the foot. Under the guise of getting stickers, he coaxed MonkeyBoy to walk down a hallway to check out his ability to walk, and MonkeyBoy couldn’t make it without much hobbling and limping. So we went ahead and had a splint/cast put on – it was basically wet quilt batting that hardened up, wrapped in a cloth bandage. He is not a fan of this at all and cries to have us take it off about every 15 minutes. I think this evening we’ll decorate it with stickers and I promised him he could wrap my feet up in bandages tonight, too. We’ll go to an orthopedic surgeon on Monday or Tuesday to have the x-rays reviewed and hopefully can get the cast off at that point. That is, if he doesn’t rip it off himself tonight – which I wouldn’t put past him.