Waaaaay back in June while the boys were at camp and Eddie and I were in the mountains, we got a bright-and-early phone call from our youth director letting us know that James had fallen playing basketball and had hurt his elbow. Activate: Grandmamma. Ughhhh. After a quick phone call to my sister-in-law who worked in a town close to James, she told us where to go for a walk-in x-ray. Because we were 4 hours away, Eddie's mom went and picked James up and took him to the urgent care where they looked at his elbow, x-rayed it, and sent him on his way in a sling. They were told a doctor would look at the x-ray and call us later to tell us what they thought.
That night while Eddie and I were having dinner, I got a phone call from the doctor who said that she didn't see a fracture on the x-ray BUT she did see evidence of a "fat pad/sail sign" that usually only appears if there is a fracture. She told us to keep him in the sling and to see an orthopedic doctor as quickly as we could to confirm the fracture and go from there. Double ugggghhhhh.
Because she called me after 6pm, I didn't get a phone call in to the orthopedic doctor until the next morning. It was a whole debacle of back-and-forth phone calls and we left it with the urgent care needed to fax James' x-rays to them before they would even make us an appointment. That was Thursday.
I think I called them back on Friday and never heard back from them.
SO...when we picked James up on Saturday we were just waiting for Monday to roll around.
MEANWHILE, James was supposed to leave on Monday for Swim Camp at FSU. Cue the tears. This was a VERY expensive camp with his club swim team and he'd been REALLY looking forward to going. On Thursday after calling the orthopedic doctor, I sent an email to the FSU camp and told them what had happened. They called me back and told me that it would be better to just cancel him (we had our fingers crossed that's what they would say, but I wanted THEM to tell me to cancel in hopes of getting some of our money back or giving us a credit for next year). It was such a disappointment, but also SUCH a relief to get some of our money back. They told us that the camp costs could be reimbursed, but he wasn't sure about the dorm cost. We wound up actually getting EVERYTHING back, though. He's looking forward to going NEXT year, but is bummed because a few of his teammates will be seniors this year and they won't go back next year.
In addition, we were cancelling/not committing to several swim meets in the meantime. He wound up missing TWO meets because of this injury.
Finally, on Monday (a week after he fell!) the orthopedic office called us and made an appointment for Wednesday. When we got to that appointment, they took more x-rays and as soon as the doctor walked in he said, "First of all, take that sling off - you don't need it." WhaaaaT? He said the doctor that read the x-ray was being VERY conservative and there was no break and he couldn't even see a fat pad/sail sign. Because they were conservative and because James couldn't be seen in ortho for another week after, he basically set himself back because he was in the sling for a week and didn't use his arm. He was cleared immediately for ANY activity that he felt like doing. He wound up taking about two weeks to get full use back - it was sore from being in the same position for a week and it was weak.
This whole thing was SUCH a bummer...but it could've also been MUCH worse. We were glad it wasn't broken! He was bruised and swollen so he definitely hurt it, but it could've been way, way worse. Whew!