Poor little Myles has his first broken bone. It's in his right foot and he's now sporting a bright orange cast. The whole situation has turned into quite the experience for me...
For those that don't know, I am a social worker at Children's Hospital Colorado. Part of my and my coworkers' job is to get involved in situations where there is a suspected "NAT" or non-accidental trauma, which basically means suspected child abuse. I'm well aware of *red flags* to look for when someone brings their child in. One of my fears since working in child protection, and now at the hospital, has been that one of my children will get injured while they are still non-verbal (which Myles still is), and I will be stuck explaining what happened hoping that I come off okay and the injury fits the story. Welp, that's exactly where I found myself. I've gotten a chuckle or two out of the whole ordeal.
Rewind back to the day we were moving. Myles' eye had been red for a few days. We weren't sure why, but on the Saturday we moved, it looked worse, so we decided we would call the pediatrician if it still looked bad on Monday. When Myles woke up on Sunday morning his eye was swollen shut, so I decided to take him to urgent care. Prior to that visit, Myles had never been to urgent care or the emergency room. This isn't something I would usually take him in for, but I was concerned that I would have the baby any day and didn't want a nasty eye infection making it's way through our house at the same time. We ended up waiting for almost two hours at urgent care, during which time Myles' eye issue pretty much resolved on its own and I got really grumpy. I was a little embarrassed when we actually saw the doctor, but also expressed my frustration at having to wait so long. (Something else I wouldn't normally do, but I was 39 weeks pregnant and alone at urgent care with two little kids. It sucked.)
Four weeks later Myles jumped off a chair and landed strangely. He cried a bit and wouldn't walk the rest of the evening. We thought maybe he twisted his ankle or something and decided to let it run its course. Three days later he was still limping, but never developed any bruising or swelling. I called our pediatrician who thought we should go to urgent care to get xrays. While at urgent care we saw the same doctor we had seen four and a half weeks prior, and the first thing she said was, "I think I saw Myles a few weeks ago." {Two visits to urgent care in a month...*red flag*}
Turns out Myles did have a broken bone, so we went home with a boot and instructions for a follow up visit with orthopedics the next week. The doctor mentioned that the bone was healing faster than she would expect, but thought it was because of his young age, saying something like, "Kids just heal so quickly."
Yesterday was the orthopedics appointment. The plan was for me to pick up Myles from preschool and go straight to the appointment...alone with all three kids. There's no way to not look chaotic when alone with my three kids.
That morning his teacher called me to let me know that Myles had tripped on the playground and his face hit the pavement. Nice. When I picked him up he looked like a mess with blood on his nose, cheek, lip, and chin, but we had to head to his orthopedics appointment. {Showing up to an appointment with blood all over your kid's face...*red flag*}
During the appointment the doctor showed me the xrays and verified my story of how Myles got hurt. He then proceeded to tell me that the xrays indicated to him that the break actually occurred about two weeks prior to the fall I was describing. {Timeline of a healing injury not matching up with the parent's story of how it occurred...*red flag*} I honestly have no recollection of anything Myles may have done to break his foot a couple weeks prior, so we just concluded that he somehow broke it and then jumping off the chair re-injured it and caused the limping.
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