Book Entry 182: 1987 Justin Breaks His Arm

          Second grade was the year Justin and his buddies fell in love with the monkey bars.  Every recess when the bell rang they raced to the monkey bars and began climbing and swinging by their arms.  Mrs. Hanson was Justin’s teacher that year.  She noticed the boys were all getting blisters on the palms of their hands.

           In order to fix the blister problem Mrs. Hanson thought of a way to keep their hands from sticking to the bars which was causing the blisters.  She thought if she put chalk powder from her chalk board erasers on the boy’s hands it would keep them from sticking.  Her plan worked.  It worked too well.  Once the chalk powder was on their hands and they started doing their little trick of holding on to the bar and doing a summer-salt tumble through their own legs they couldn’t hold onto the bar.  All friction and grip was gone.  Justin fell from the bars landing on his wrist and snapping it.

           I got a phone call at home.  Mrs. Hanson said, “I think Justin may have a broken arm.  Do you want to meet us at the hospital or come to the school and take him?   We lived about twenty minutes away so I told her I’d meet them at the hospital.  When I walked into the waiting room he was sitting like a big boy in the waiting room next to Mrs. Hanson.  He had an ice pack on his arm, his eyes were swollen and red, he was trying hard to be brave.  I gently moved the ice pack so I could see the arm.  His wrist was in the shape of a Z.  There was no question it was broken.

          At first the doctor said he would need to put Justin to sleep in order to set his arm.  After X-rays were taken it was decided that wouldn’t be necessary.  With a great deal of difficulty and pain Justin’s arm was set.  The doctor decided it was a break bad enough to warrant Justin spending the night in the hospital.

           The nurse brought a reclining chair into the room so I could spend the night too.  Justin was taking lots of pain medicine to dull the pain in his arm but he was afraid we were going to leave him alone.  When he saw the chair and learned I would be staying with him he showed some relief.

           I went home to get a couple things for the night.  When I got back to Justin’s room Mrs. Hanson was sitting on the edge of his bed.  She was caressing his head and tears were running down her cheeks.  “This is my fault,” she said, “I thought I was helping but my idea back fired!”  At that point I’m not sure if Justin or Mrs. Hanson felt worse!

           Mrs. Hansen and I watched while a kind nurse came in with several popsicles in her hand.  She let Justin choose the one he wanted and told him to ring the button on his bed with the picture of the nurse on it. She said, “When you ring the button a nurse will ask what she can do to help you.  You just tell her you’d like a pop cycle and tell her what color.  I promise you will have a popsicle within a few minutes.”  Justin finally smiled but just for a second.

When morning came and the covers were lifted from Justin’s arm we noticed his fingers were all greatly swollen.  The doctor was called.  When he came to Justin’s room he brought with him a saw with a little blade at one end.  He told Justin he was going to loosen the cast in hopes the swelling would go down.  When he finished the cast had a small space of about a quarter inch down the length of it.  The doctor said Justin was ready to go home.  He told us to get ready and he’d sign Justin out later that morning.  We waited all morning, all afternoon, and into the evening.  Finally about seven that evening a nurse came in to tell us the doctor had never signed the release and Justin was going to need to stay another night.

          The medicine Justin was taking upset his stomach.  Every time a nurse would come in to check on Justin they would offer him a popsicle.  With purple being his color of choice he had thirty-seven popsicles before we left the hospital.  In a three day period we’d seen a teacher cry, spent two miserable nights trying to rest, and Justin had set a record for the number of popsicles eaten in a 48 hour period in the children’s ward!