In case you’re keeping tally

January 30, 2009 · Filed under Uncategorized

You didn’t really think we’d get through the whole of January without taking a kid to hospital, did you?

This actually happened a few weeks ago now but I haven’t had a chance to update, and I wouldn’t want to leave a hospital trip off the record.

We were at the shops with the kids (mistake. always a mistake) and Hugo had climbed out of the stroller and refused to get back in. So he was walking with Leigh holding his hand, which was okay until he decided he didn’t want to go where she went.

He flung himself on the floor while she was still holding his hand.

On the way home he was holding his left arm in a weird kind of way, and favouring it. He was crying a weird cry, too, that told us it hurt.

When we got home I tried feeding him. He was happy to nurse but kept his left arm limp by his side. Normally he’d be busy swatting at me and scratching me.

So I put him on the floor and asked him to pretend to be a dog. At first he just sat there. Eventually he came to me with the saddest wonky crawl you’ve ever seen. He couldn’t take any weight on his left arm and it was awful.

I bundled him off to the hospital at that point.

Turns out he had a pulled elbow, which is apparently very common in young children. In fact, there was another kid with the exact same problem when we were at the hospital. And as fate would have it, the consultant who had been called to assess that kid saw Hugo at triage and figured he was the pulled elbow he’d been called for, so we were seen immediately. Bad luck for the other family, but good luck for us!

There’s a maneuvre they do in triage to fix a pulled elbow, but Hugo didn’t need it because it seems my fiddling around with his arm trying to see what was wrong had reduced it anyway.

Having had it once he’s more likely to have it again, and pulling his hand or lifting him by the wrist (not that we do that) is the most likely thing to cause it, so we did something I never thought we’d do, and bought a toddler harness. We’ve already had some snarky comments, but I’d rather deal with that than with a kid with an injured arm or one who’s squashed on the road.