I left you hanging Monday…

…right when we knew we were in the hospital for the evening with a night of non-sleeping on hard chairs awaiting us.  Have you been wondering how we all fared the rest of the night?  :)

Wade rested on and off but would go from a dead sleep to screaming after jerking in his sleep caused him to jerk his broken leg. His little friend Blackie became such a comfort, and I am forever grateful to the girl we only saw for a few minutes in the Children’s ER who gave that to him. Blackie and he went through quite a lot together.

Chris and I took turns trying to sleep on a loveseat down the hall in a family room… I think we may have gotten an hour or two of sleep each the whole night.

It wasn’t long and we were meeting the attending orthopedic doctor and learned that they would be choosing the less invasive option… the body cast, so that meant NO incisions or foreign objects.

Soon after they began prepping him, and we kissed him goodbye.

We waited a few hours and finally got the word that it was over and everything went well.  He seemed to take forever to wake up from the anesthesia AND the breathing tube they had inserted while he was under had caused some swelling and gave him this awful labored breathing sound.

Back in our room his oxygen got low and combined with the labored breathing they didn’t want to give him his paid meds yet. He was in pain and pretty much inconsolable. Eventually they decided he needed oxygen and tried to put the tube things in his nose.

The child decided ain’t NO WAY he was going to have tubes sticking in his nose. Not if he could help it. He screamed and flailed and did his darnedest to rip those babies out.

Our Wild Wadester is one hard-headed fellow.  It is a normal CONSTANT struggle to get him to listen and do what he ought to. So his normal behavior challenges combined with this intense pain he couldn’t possibly be able to understand and process made for one mountainous tantrum.

The nurse finally gave up on the tubes and tried blowing some on him through a bigger tube thing. He wasn’t having that either, of course, but Chris did it from behind his head without him realizing, and he FINALLY calmed the heck down.

Later that day we got instructions on a new harness thing that will be his carseat for the next 6 weeks.  It looks sort of like a parachute harness, and he will actually lie completely down in the back seat of the van.  The van’s seat belts will loop through the harness and buckle him to the seat. We are already anticipating great battles to come over him not wanting to lie down in the van every.single.car-ride.

We also received our rented wheelchair that is somehow simultaneously both ENORMOUS and incredibly SHORT. I mean, seriously… it reclines on one end, and it has the leg pieces on the other hand so it stretches out forever.  BUT… the handles on this thing come about to Chris’s knees. I know it’s a child’s wheelchair, but, hello… that doesn’t mean a CHILD is going to be PUSHING IT.

It has an extended head rest part that we have been using as handles so as not to become the Hunchback Parents of Notre Dame.

We finally were discharged Friday afternoon and headed home in the 5:00 pm Friday night traffic. We have impeccable timing.

He ended up getting what’s called a Hip Spica Cast.  It covers his left leg completely from his ankle up and continues on up to his chest… almost to his poor little armpits.

His whole bottom is free so he is still able to use the bathroom, but we are trying to adjust to how best handle that. We are also trying to figure out underwear and clothing solutions that will fit over the enormous thing. We bought a few stretchy pants and shorts and have been pulling them on over.

His pain level is getting better and better, and he is more and more willing to move his broken leg around thankfully.  But his pain killers were making him insanely itchy all over, and he was one extremely grouchy and restless little man.

Chris and I have decided it is much like caring for an infant again.  Only this infant is loud, angry, and weighs 50lbs.

Through the whole hospital experience he kept pitifully saying, “I can’t do this. I can’t do this.” And also, “Get me out of here.”

It breaks your heart to see your little one in so much pain, and even worse when you know they just don’t understand why you are letting all the strangers poke and prod them, and why no one can make it better.

Chris and I are taking turns staying home with him this week until his follow up appointment on Friday.  I talked with the preschool director and she thinks they will be able to accommodate him at school with his wheelchair.  Oh my, what a huge relief that was.

Going through times like this really show you who you married, and I am immensely grateful for the man that was standing beside me through all of this.

God gave us the grace and strength to survive this far, and we know He will get us through the next 6+ weeks of Our New Normal.

Thankfully, just in the last day and a half the crazy man has been MUCH less crabby and miserable as we’ve stopped the constant doses of pain killers, and it has seemed to have a BIG effect on his disposition. His nights are still pretty much agonizing, but days are getting better and better. :)

On a funny note… the rad and fabulous Heather gets the grand prize for somehow remembering a pic my sister uploaded during our family holiday gathering last year.  Friday or Saturday, I got an email notification that Heather had “liked” my comment on that picture.  When I clicked on the link to see, it was a little too crazy to see what the pic ironically said!  :)

If you haven’t ever played Apples to Apples before, the idea is to look at your hand of red cards and find the best word that matches the word on the green card.

The green card word was “Dangerous” and my sister in law Jen passed over “Atomic Bombs,” “Machine Guns,” and “Bats” to choose my card “Trampolines” as best depicting “Dangerous.”

A few months later and how true those words are ringing now.  Jen, you called it.