Pretty Much a Done Deal

Thursday night, Brooke and I were watching TV in the living room and Amanda was playing in my office. Suddenly, we heard a loud cry/moan and Amanda came into the living room. My first thought was that she was pestering the dogs again and one of them had snapped at her. I was relieved to see that she had no blood, and then she told us what happened. She was playing with Sully and had jumped off of the couch onto the blanket next to him. She tried to catch herself and hurt her elbow somehow. She said it made a loud "pop". Since Amanda often has a flair for the dramatic, I said what any Daddy would say, "It's going to be OK. Let's go to bed and it will be all better in the morning."

Well, Friday morning began at 6:30pm when we heard, "Daddy! Daddy!" I grogilly wandered into Amanda's room in time to hear her cry, "My elbow hurts and I can't move my arm". We got her up and looked at the swollen elbow. Great! We didn't know if it was broken, sprained or what. We went with the "medical" reasoning, "If it was broken, it would have hurt so bad she couldn't sleep last night." At least it made us feel better.

We gave her some Tylenol, but it became apparent that she was going to need a sling at the very least. Brooke went sling shopping while I tried to find something at the house to show Amanda what we were going to do and how she would be able to go to school. Of course, neither Walgreens nor Wal-Mart had a sling for children, so we made do with an adult sling and some safety pins. With the sling and Tylenol kicking in, Amanda was sure she could go to school. Thank the Lord pictures were the day before!

I left for our church's Men's Retreat before Amanda got home from school that day, so I was a little worried about her. When Amanda got home, Brooke took the sling off to see how Amanda would do. She did not like having to straighten her arm, but she said it was feeling better than it was that morning. Well, the sling never went back on and Amanda is doing much better. She's not ready for the monkey bars yet, but it's pretty much a done deal as far as she is concerned.

- Rob