One week after his 7th birthday, Eric had an unfortunate incident involving one of his balloons: he got his feet tangled in its ribbons, then tripped and fell--in our living room on two layers of carpet.
This hardly seems noteworthy, but the events that followed turned out to be pretty memorable.
Eric cried hard after the fall, and he seemed a little pale. We tried to distract him with some lunch (which he refused) and some TV (which he accepted). After about an hour, Eric had calmed down quite a bit. We'd talked about taking him to the hospital in case he'd twisted his arm, but we decided it was probably just bruised, especially since he had only fallen from standing and landed on carpet.
I left Eric with Jason and went grocery shopping with Alaina. Not long afterwards, Jason called me, and I could hear Eric crying in the background. Eric is usually a brave guy--he hardly cries when he gets hurt and hates having to miss out on anything, even to recover from an injury. Hearing him cry like that over something that had happened over two hours earlier, I decided to take him to Emergency.
Soon an x-ray showed that Eric had fractured his elbow. The doctor recommended a sling, which he said Eric would need to wear for "a month or two."
The sling helped a bit, but we were a little worried about keeping Eric in it for several weeks--his arm was flopping around and really sore, especially after sleeping.
The next day, though, we got a call from the hospital for Eric to go in to the cast clinic. This appointment resulted in a splint/half-cast, tightly secured by elastic bandages. Eric was not happy with this new development, although I could see that it would keep his arm a lot more stable. Still, the tight wrapping really bothered him, and I wasn't sure how we were going to keep it hygienic over the recommended three weeks of wear.
Fortunately, when I talked to our family doctor the next day, he said we could take off the bandages and rewrap them (something Janae happens to be an expert at doing!). So, now Eric's arm is stable, able to go in the bath, and wrapped just right in clean bandages every day.
He has quickly learned to do everything with one arm--or at least one elbow (he's still using his right arm as much as possible, which is quite a bit). After the first day he was getting dressed, putting on shoes, buckling his seatbelt, and carrying his backpack without any help.
So, that's what Eric's second week of being 7 was like! I wonder what the rest of the year will bring....
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