So, daylight savings time started today. For those of you who live in a saner part of the world that doesn't adhere to this BS tradition, well, good for you.
I had this very cogent and well thought out post I wanted to get to a few days ago. I was driving and thinking about it, and it was good.
Of course, I was driving, so I couldn't write down any of those thoughts. Then, I suffer from immediately forgetting about what I was thinking about in the car when I get out of it (some form of threshold memory), so I can't for the life of me remember what I wanted to write about.
Oh well. None of my other plans for the weekend came to pass, either, so it's par for the course at this point.
Daylight savings time is awful, and I can't reconcile the fact that it's supposed to be 6:00PM as I'm writing this. It doesn't help that I slept very little last night due to dogs and my son, so I dozed basically all day today, but that's another story.
What I guess I should probably talk about is my son breaking his arm. It happened a week ago yesterday. He's two and half, and it was now the second most terrifying thing that I've had to deal with since he was born. If you've been following my blog for some time (I think there's one person who has), you'll know that almost exactly two years ago now, my son spent a week in the hospital with RSV. That was honestly one of the most difficult weeks of my entire life.
This requires some back story so I can set the stage. First, I try to get down on the floor and play with my son every day for at least 20-30 minutes. We wrestle a lot, and he really enjoys playing rough and being thrown around. Once I threw him on my bed and he then spent the next 20 minutes just standing up and asking me to throw him again. We've also done this with the couch. It looks apparently scary enough that my wife usually yells at me when she sees me do it, but we've never had an issue and the kid's laugh is super infectious when I throw him so we do it all the time now.
Second, my bed is a combination of a really old bed frame that my wife has had since she was young, and a really expensive latex foam pillow top mattress. It's a little absurd, but with the super thick mattress and the frame that sits high enough off the ground to store shoe boxes under the bed, we end up with the top of the mattress measuring in about three feet off the ground. It makes it difficult for my twelve year old beagle mix to get into the bed, and, honestly, me to get into the bed when I've run too far and my knees are sore. It's also super fun for the kid to climb because it's got lots of hand holds and it's pretty high up for him. Bonus: once he's climbed up, he can bounce on the bed, which isn't springy because there are no springs, but is bouncy just the same.
Finally, as I know I've mentioned at some point, last year we got a new puppy. She's a German Shepard, and, at just over a year old, she's still super hyper. Most of the time when I rough house with the kid, she gets super excited and wants to play to, so I end up wrestling with the kid and fending off the dog at the same time. It's fun and funny but sometimes ends with the kid getting wapped in the face with her tail or me getting a pretty bad ouchy from her really scratchy paws.
So, now I've got all the backstory, so I can set the stage. The kid and I had been wrestling in the living room, but I rolled over wrong and hurt my old man body on the hardwood floor. He wanted to keep playing, but I didn't want to roll around on the hard floor anymore, so, my brain decided to go with "throw him on the bed." It was a hit, and I jumped in after him and we continued wrestling on the considerably softer surface of the bed. Then the pup joined and confusion ensued. We were having a good time, and the kid "knocked me over," so I had to take a moment to recover. While I was recovering, he was bouncing on the bed. He was a little too close to the edge for my comfort, so I rocked to the side to sit up and pull him back to the edge, but when I sat up, he was gone.
It wasn't one of those slow motion situations. One second he was there bouncing on the bed. Then he was gone. It was like bad cut scene magic.
Then I heard him hit the ground, a bad crack, and then he started yelling. I got to the edge of the bed and he was on the ground with his arm behind him at a really bad angle. I didn't have to touch him to know he broke his arm...
I jumped down and scooped him up to try to comfort him. The dog didn't realize the game was over so I had to lock her in the bedroom as I rushed the kid out to his mommy for super mommy comfort. I was looking at his arm while she was holding him, and the middle of his forearm reminding me of Harry Potter's arm when the bones were removed. Once again, I was certain it was broken. My wife wasn't, but I splinted it and told her we were taking him to the ER.
Quick tangent: I really, really, really hate the BS COVID restrictions in the ER. I couldn't go into the ER with my son. I couldn't even sit in the waiting room. I had hastily left the house because my son was screaming in pain and I wanted to get him in to the ER as soon as possible, so I didn't make sure I had my phone with me. That shouldn't have been an issue, except now I have to sit in the god forsaken car, so the only lifeline I had to know how he was doing was back at my house 10 minutes away. If we're all wearing masks, it's not like we're trying to pack the whole family into the room. There is absolutely no reason the hospital should have a one parent policy. It's complete nonsense and I really wanted to rip the woman who told me a new one. Some other father there did in response to her telling him that he couldn't go back to see his daughter. At some point I was allowed in (ostensibly to swap with my wife, but they didn't make her leave), but by then I had already missed the vast majority of my son's time in the ER. He had already seen the doctor, had the x-ray, been diagnosed with a fractured radius, and was just sitting in the bed awaiting the temporary splint that would allow us to go home. I can't think of a time I've felt more helpless.
Anyhow, kid ends up with a cast two days later. I guess they don't cast kids in the hospital anymore at 9:00pm on a Saturday, so we had to wait with the splint until Monday morning to go see the ortho specialist in a different facility. That was another nuisance, but whatever at this point. The kid is in his cast for at least a month, and he seems perfectly fine except for the fact that his range of motion is limited due to having his left arm pretty much unusable.
I've had a lot of issues over the years with health care providers, but, honestly, this was one of the worst experiences I've ever had. When the kid was in the hospital with RSV (different hospital), the staff there was wonderful and treated us like we were scared parents of a sick child. The staff at the local ER treated us like we were children, including the multiple employees who told me just how great my emergency splint was like I was a child who just drew something that's going up on the fridge. Then to spend an hour in the ER just to get an x-ray and a better splint which he'd have to wear for 40 hours before he could see the ortho specialist to get an actual cast was obnoxious. Not to mention the absurd amount of money I'm for sure going to get charged for that hour, when, according to my wife, my son spent most of hour watching Monsters, Inc and chatting up the nurses. Thankfully, the ortho office was super friendly, got us in three hours after we called, and the doctor there was great with the kid. In fact, we spent less time getting a cast and a second x-ray than we spent in the ER when all they did was take an x-ray and slap on a splint.
Anyhow, kids, am I right? How come no one told me this parenting thing would be so hard? At least he only has to wear the cast for 4 weeks so long as it heals as expected.
Alright, enough of my complaining.
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