everybody is okay

Some of you may have seen my update on Facebook but I wanted to follow up with a post here. Lisa left yesterday to go to Indiana to spend some time with her grandfather who isn't doing so good. I'm here by myself with the girls until Tuesday evening. No big deal, right?

Well, today started out great. The girls and I went to the zoo this morning. Although it didn't go perfectly, it was still fun. We got home and here's when the fun started. I had a doctor's appointment but the plan was to get the girls down early so our next door neightbors could hang out over here while I was gone. As I was corralling the girls to get them ready for their nap, I was holding Alyssa's hand as we were walking toward the room and she tripped. No big deal, it's happened a hundred times, right? Not this time.

She didn't immediately cry out but a few seconds later, she was holding her arm and screaming in pain. It was heart breaking to see her like that. I picked her up and checked out her arm from her shoulder to her fingertips and nothing felt wrong...but she wouldn't move it and everytime she tried, she would cry out.

We got some ice and she calmed down while she actually started to fall asleep on my chest. When I tried to lay her down in the crib, she REALLY cried out again. I knew I had to take her to the doctor. Instead of going to the ER, I called and made an appointment with the girls' doctor an hour from then. I called Lisa back to tell her what happened while Alyssa was crying out. I asked if she wanted to talk to Mommy and of course she said "yyyeessss". Surprisingly, she grabbed the phone and held it in the arm that was hurting! Slowly she pulled it up to her ear and listened to Lisa talk to her. This was the first time she even attempted to move her arm and she wasn't crying!

After that, she was acting fine. No more crying and no more holding her arm. I thought about not going but as Lisa said, it would give us peace of mind. So I went to see our doctor even though Alyssa was acting fine now. I explained the whole ordeal to the doctor and she explained to me what is called Nurse Maid's Elbow. Apparently, toddlers are very susceptible to their elbow coming out of socket. Actually, it's one of the bones in her forearm that is held in at the elbow by a ligament. Evidently this bone can slip out of the grasp of the ligament and is pretty painful. It can be put back in if you bend the arm. Evidently, we or she managed to put it back in place. I'm thinking it was when she picked up the phone to talk to Lisa.

Anyway, she's fine now. Actually she was fine about 20 minutes after it happened so she's definitely fine now. Doc said she would may be sore for a couple days but she showed no sign tonight that it hurt. Actually, at one point she bonked her head and she said "hurt" which evidently reminded her that her arm hurt so she grabbed the wrong arm and started fake crying. It didn't take much to distract her and help her forget that anything happened.

They both went down to bed pretty easy tonight. I'm so glad it wasn't worse. It's hard to believe that this actually happened today. But now they are sleeping and I'm sipping ona cold one while I'm eating popcorn and watching Die Hard...so I guess everything is okay now.

Let's see what tomorrow brings us.