This is how Allison’s first day of Summer went. Matthew and his friends were going to the pool so of course the girls wanted to go. I had to run to the store to get some things for them for Day Camp so Ryan was going to take them. As I was walking into the store Ryan called to tell me that Allison had broken her arm and they were headed to the hospital.
We went to the hospital closest to our house. I got there a few minutes after Alli. She was sitting in a chair waiting for them to take her back. You could tell she was in a lot of pain, she was focusing on keeping it together. Her and Ryan told me what happened while we waited for them to check her in. She had decided she was to excited to wait for Ryan to drive to the pool so she grabbed her towel and left on her bike, about 5 seconds into her ride the towel fell down and got caught in the wheel and flipped her over the handle bars. She had a couple scraps and of course her arm hurt really bad. She walked in the house and got an ice pack and told Ryan that she didn’t feel like going to the pool anymore and laid down on the couch. A few minutes later Ryan came to see if she really didn’t want to go swimming. She had her arm covered with the ice pack and asked him to get her a new one, he saw her arm when she lifted it off and realized that her arm was broken. She said, “Oh, that’s probably why I can’t move my fingers.” Then she got hysterical for a few minutes and Ryan said his brain was going hysterical too. He put the girls in the car and called me and headed to the nearest hospital. By the time they got to the hospital Allison had stopped crying and put her game face on. She never cried or even whimpered again after that.
A few minutes later they took us back and we started the waiting process for x-rays, doctors, and pain meds. When the x-rays came back it showed both bones broken, one obvious, one not so obvious. Since she was a kid and the way it was broken they wanted us to go to Children’s Mercy Hospital. They splinted it and gave her pain meds and sent us on our way. Ryan went home to drop Emilee off with Matthew and then met us there. Before he left to do that he gave Allison a blessing in the car then I took her to Children’s Mercy.
They put us in our room and Allison settled in and watched Harry Potter. The doctor came in and told her that they could give her more pain meds and do a shot in her arm to numb it then fix it, or do a shot in her arm that made her fall asleep and she could wake up when her arm was fixed. This seemed like an obvious decision to me but Allison didn’t even hesitate and said to just give her the shot to make it numb and fix it while she was awake. Ryan and I were both pretty surprised but she said she was sure. A little while later they came in to numb and set her arm. I sat at the bottom of her bed and rubbed her leg and tried not to pass out. She sat there and watched with only an occasional grimace and powered through it like a champ.
Through the whole process which took all day I was very impressed with Allison. It would have been totally fine if she was crying and upset. She definitely had a mental conversation with herself in the waiting room and you could see her decide to set her mind to the task at hand and handle the situation. When the doctor was explaining things, she listened and asked questions and when they were fixing her arm she cooperated and did whatever they needed without any issues. The doctors themselves kept saying over and over how impressed they were with how great she was doing.
Throughout the day she was asked several times if she needed anything to help make her comfortable. They wouldn’t let her eat or drink anything in case they had to put her to sleep, she didn’t complain about not eating ALL DAY even once, but she did ask if she could have some watermelon when she got home and a pizza with extra pineapple on it. Of course we made that happen. Her other request was she really wanted to see her brother, he was watching Emilee for us and can’t even handle someone talking about a broken bone let alone see one so he sent her some messages on the phone instead. Ryan and I were both touched that she wanted him for emotional support. After we got home Matthew sat in her room with her for a while and talked and hung out with her until she fell asleep. They have been spending a lot more time with each other since she broke her arm and it is nice to see them developing a closer relationship.
Ryan and I both had the thought separately that while it is crappy that she broke her arm it is also a blessing in disguise and opportunity for each of us to develop and work on our relationship with Allison without her having to much choice in the matter. Allison is extremely independent and isn’t always the most pleasant person to be around so the rest of us tend to keep a little more distance between ourselves and her than we do with other family members. Since she broke her arm she is limited on some of her regular activities and is around a little more than usual and obviously needs more help with things then she used to. She is also very particular about the way she looks and dresses and cares about presenting herself a certain way. She hates having to have help doing things that she has to do (shower, get dressed, brush and do her hair, cut her food, put on socks, tie shoes, carry things). Control is a big issue with Allison. It is very hard for her to even give the impression that she needs help because then she feels like she isn’t in control. This is when she can become quite unpleasant. Her SOP if she can’t control a situation to her desires is to take the stance that she could care less about it and wants nothing to do with whatever it was anymore at all costs. Again, this can be very unpleasant to be around. So while it would be annoying for anyone to not be able to put your shirt on. For her the situation is made even more loathsome and unbearable because she cares a great deal about her appearance and it irks her to no end that she not only has to ask for help, she has to wait and be dependent on when someone can help and be pleasant enough about it that whoever is helping her will continue to help her.
So the blessing in disguise, that for all involved seems to be very well if not perfectly disguised at times, is that Allison is presented with unavoidable ways to offer more opportunities of service and positive interaction with her to us, and we are presented with many opportunities to serve her and spend time with her in different ways then we are used too. It isn’t always pretty but I really do see many opportunities for each of us to better ourselves and our relationships with each other for the next 6-8 weeks she has her cast on. In case any of us are really slow learners though, Heavenly Father has given us plenty of extra practice time. We went to the doctor for a follow up a week or so after she broke it. They took a new xray and gave us an update. She will have her cast for 6-8 weeks minimum, then she will have a full time braces for several months, then she will be able to wear it part time for several more months. Then in 6 months to a year she can go back to her more active activities like gymnastics.