A Hospital Visit| Jenn Hoffmann Photography| Personal| Bay Area

Derek has two emergency room visits under his belt before the age of 5. This time he was pushed off a pretty high trampoline and broke his wrist (the first was when he slipped a few months ago and hit his head on a bench. He ended up with 4 staples in his head that time). It was really traumatic for him as he had to be admitted to the hospital and had surgery to repair the broken bones.

At first sight of his hand, I immediately knew I had to get to the hospital. He was screaming in pain and kept saying "I can't move my hand"- which made me numb with fear. I left Ella at the house we were at and drove him to the hospital myself (not quite sure how I did that).

We were immediately given an ER room and he was quickly drugged up on morphine. One side effect that we were unaware of from the drug, is that it can cause itchiness. So for the next 12 hours, I stood by his bedside and scratched his face, nose and many other body parts as he screamed out. He couldn't itch anything himself as he had one broken arm and the other was tethered up with an IV. Not fun.

The next morning he was taken away screaming down the hall in to surgery (a mother's worst nightmare) and came out of surgery with 2 pins holding the bones together.
He's been on the mend ever since. A week after surgery, he went back to the doctor to have a hard cast put on. He chose his favorite color red and loved that he could ask people to sign it.

5 days after the cast was put on, I was taking his jammies off in the morning and as I slid the arm of the shirt off his arm I felt the cast slide down with it. So back to the doctor we went and he ended up being re-casted. This time he is now sporting a very pretty light blue cast.

He has about 2 more weeks (hopefully) left in the hard cast and then he will have the pins removed and will be placed in a brace. We are crossing our fingers that he has no long term conditions resulting from this injury and that it will be a good story to tell when he is older.

Here are a few pictures taken with my camera phone and point & shoot...