Cameron's trip

We had our first emergency room trip with one of our kids. We had to take Cameron to the ER the other day. After Greg changed his diaper he put him down onto the floor and Cameron just started screaming. Cameron wouldn't move his arm and anytime we tried to touch it, he wailed louder. We thought maybe Greg pulled a muscle in his shoulder getting him off the table. We thought we'd see how he felt in a little bit and sat down for breakfast. Cameron was not able to feed himself and so Greg had to feed him. We decided since it was a Sunday we would go ahead and take him to the ER (we were probably over reacting) but if something was really wrong, I didn't want to deal with it all by myself on Monday while Greg was at work.

So we dressed the kids quickly, dropped the girls off at Grandma and Grandpa's and headed to St. Anthony's/Cardinal Glennon's Children's Hospital.

We envisioned being stuck there for hours. Especially since it was a Sunday morning and it was also Super bowl Sunday. When we walked in, we checked in. As soon as we sat down, a nurse walked in and took us right back to the children's wing. As we were walking back there, she saw how Cameron was holding his arm and said, "Oh, Nurse Maid's Elbow. That's very common. It's an easy fix." She put us in the room and the doctor actually followed us into the room. They told us they would fix his arm before they even did any of they paperwork or take any of his vitals. He'd be fine in 5 minutes.

The doctor straightened and twisted his arm a little and then there was a little pop and the elbow went back into place. Cameron cried for about two minutes, then he was back to normal. He actually cried longer while they did his vitals. Eventually, he was climbing and running all over the ER.  We were there a grand total of 20minutes!

I asked the doctor what would have happened if we would not have taken him into the ER and the doctor said that eventually his elbow would start swelling and he would be in more pain. So it was a good thing we took him. Call it a parent's instinct.

The funny thing about the story is that after the doctor "popped" his elbow back into place, one of the nurses came in and asked us to sign a "consent to treat" form. Hmmmmm. What if we would have refused? Would they have popped his elbow back out?

The moral of the story is to lift a child by under the shoulder.