Ouch

Sorry I didn't read any blogs today - I wanted to, but at 12.15 I got a call from the school.

Son was on his school trip to a local fort, listening to a speaking display, when another, larger group from the same school came into the room and were milling around so that he couldn't hear it anymore. He turned to go back to his group leader and tripped over something (he's not sure what, but thinks it might have been a foot stuck out,) landed awkwardly against something else and broke his wrist; greenstick fracture with the bone squashed like a bent drinking straw and his hand forced into a claw.

They took him to hospital but I had to get myself there behind him, and detour to the school to pick up his little sister en route.

Triage, X-ray, Consultant 1, Consultant 2 (orthopod), temporary half plaster, up to the ward, ward admittance and all the same questions all over again plus some more; anaesthetic pads ready for the drip, anaesthetist's interview, and then they snuck him in to surgery at the end of the day, 7pm this evening.

Mercifully no wires, although I had to sign consent for them, just in case.

Plaster for five weeks - through his Birthday, through the school play where he's doing the lights - he should get his arm back just in time for Christmas.

At 9pm I had to leave him at the hospital, because whilst he'd stopped demanding we go home (because he's nearly eleven, for heaven's sake) and was beginning to think he really rather wanted me there, he didn't want his little sister, who was in tears of jealousy because the day had exhausted her and she was surrounded by people with comfy beds. Husband was still on his way home from a two day training course and unreachable - I wasn't even sure if he had his doorkeys.

Poor Son had his fall just before lunchtime and had eaten nothing since breakfast at 8am. School wouldnt let him eat or drink anything from his packed lunch 'in case'. He remained so sanguine and matter of fact about his injury that one or two people questioned the diagnosis. He left theatre and the recovery ward with a bravery award certificate from each, yet when his sister started blubbing about her urgent need for her bed, a single tear formed in the corner of his eye, as he told her that now she knew how he felt, watching the rest of the ward have their dinner time before he went down. He was starving.

All that trauma, and, typical male, it was his stomach that broke the dam in the end. Having been the perfect patient all day, he fussed until they brought him drinking water, swigged down a whole glass (even though he was still too woozy to sit himself up, and even though they had warned him to sip) then declared that as proof he was well enough to eat. He consumed the packet of cheesy curlz from his lunchbox in record time for a kid with plaster round one hand and a needle in the other (I had to rip the bag right open for him and lay it on his chest), and was bewailing the ban on his chocolate bar and the loss of his 10-hour old ham sandwiches when I had to leave.

I have just phoned the hospital and discovered that yes, he kept up the requests until they gave him toast. No, against the expectations of the ward sister he had managed not to be sick, and he is now, finally, asleep.

I should be there, but my biggest worry now is how to get back there to get him home again. I have just spent over £40 in taxis and feeding his sister from vending machines, oh and two comics to make the six hour wait a little more bearable for them both. The first taxi trip, obviously, was due to emergency, the second due to the fact that coming home by bus with a tearful, exhausted little girl in tow would take something like three hours with a change in the middle and a walk at the end even if the buses were even still running - they stop at 9.

Thats a good week's shopping money gone and I'm going to have to dip into the Council Tax money to get Son home tomorrow.

Don't ask me whether it's faith in God, or plain shock, that finds me unable to work up the panic that the financial situation deserves, because I really couldn't tell you, but if I'm offline for a couple of days, I'll be fussing round my boy, or diving down his wardrobe trying to find clothes that'll go on over the plaster. At this point I don't even know if his school polo shirt will come off over it.

He still thinks he's going to collect his sister from school tomorrow to prove he's alive, and then go to his bigger sister's house for the weekend, for the fireworks. One step at a time.

Have fun.

Be right back..............