On September 15th, Hope's 4th birthday, she slipped and broke her arm. She had walked from the living room towards our bathroom for her nightly bath, slipped, landed on her left elbow and started to cry. Marc and I were in the living room still while it happened. I got up and found her on the ground unable to move. I did a quick assessment, asked her a few questions and discovered it was her arm that was hurting. I moved her onto our bed and immediatly saw her elbow was much larger than it should've been.
I've known friend's children who have dislocated their elbows, and I was hoping that's what this was. We made a call to our clinic, called IST, who had us call the after hours doc (this happened around 6:30pm). She told us to make our way there and she would meet us. Our clinic, without any traffic is about 30 minutes away.
We asked Isaac to walk out back and ask Lucy (lives on the same property as us with her husband, Hosea) if she could come in and watch Isaac and Geneva while we both went to the clinic. She quickly made her way and we got in the car to go. We are so thankful for their presence and help!
Over an hour later, we finally made it to the clinic. Hope fell asleep on the way, and we were so grateful she could get a bit of rest. At the clinic, the nurse gave Hope a suppository for pain, and attempted about 3-4 times to get a sling on her. With each move of the arm, Hope was crying out in pain. Marc and I actually ended up doing more of the sling placement than the nurse. That was my first frustration. This was an international clinic, but it honestly seemed like she had never placed a sling before.
Anyhow, we loaded up again, having to move Hope with her huge, painful arm, back into the car and drive to HiTech for x-rays as our clinic does not have the equipment to do so. We got stuck in traffic getting there also. When we finally made it, we got right into the room for X-Rays. The tech had Hope sit on my lap and me sit on a chair. Then he asked me to move oh so slightly, which caused pain for Hope. Then I had to move again. Then again. I was fed up & asked them to PLEASE figure out where you want us before you move us again. Finally we got the x-rays and Marc could hear the radiologist looking at the x-rays saying it was broken. UGH. Poor Hopey girl!
We got copies of the x-rays to bring back to our clinic with the report from the radiologist (no digital here! Good old film copies!). Finally back at the clinic, the doctor met us, told us we would need to go to a different hospital the next day because she needed either her bone set (with being put under) or that surgery was also possibility. They put a back slab/cast on the back of her arm and sent us on our way. We left with an arm still broken, no confirmation of a doc appointment the next day and the lingering thought of surgery and a possible trip to South Africa the very next day.
We arrived home just after 11pm, got Hope settled in bed and started reading up on our insurance policy, emergency medvac coverage (or non-coverage) and investigating potential flights to South Africa.
More on days 2 & 3 later!
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