Things Not to do on a Playset

Last Monday my son Teddy fell off of our new playset and broke his arm badly. Amazingly enough, when you use a playset correctly you rarely get hurt. However, when you climb up onto the arm that holds the swing and then STAND ON IT, sometimes you fall. If you are a 7 year old boy it's pretty much a gimmie that you will fall and that you will get hurt.

At the first hospital my husband got to see the x-ray and it's never good when you say, "Ummm, where's the rest of his arm?" This got them a ride to next hospital. where he had surgery to re-attach the the elbow and insert rods and wires. For the medical geeks he has a supracondylar fracture of his right humerus with complete displacement of the fragments. For surgery he had an open reduction and k-wire to said fracture. Ooooh, spiffy sounding isn't it? Anyone else have the phrase "Snap, Crackle, Pop!" stuck in their mind right now?
I had to stay at home with our younger daughters and Ted had the car so the next morning after getting the girls into school I braved the Sydney public transportation system and took 2 trains out to the hospital. The website has the hospital as next to the train station but we have learned that Aussies have an amusing idea of"walking distance" I finally got through the Bataan Death March and made it there while carrying a Donkey Kong shopping bag with pirate slippers, Battleship, books & a Star Wars blanket...yeah, I'm the cover of Vogue. There I switched with Ted so he could go into work. Poor Teddy, he looked so pitiful sleeping after surgery. I think parents should be given special rose-colored glasses when looking at their sick or hurt child - I can't imagine too many images worse than that.

Interesting factoid about Aussie hospitals...parents are expected to dispense meds likeTylenol and Advil (known as panadol and nurofen here) Yep. I'm not kidding.The nurse handed me the syringes - no needles, just to shoot liquid into the mouth and walked out. Shocked, I went to ask when she would be giving him the meds and she looked at me like I asked her to come clean out my bathroom at home. For the rest of the time we were there I just pulled the dumb American card every chance I could. Wasn't hard, we've been here a year and I'm still shaking my head most days.
Teddy got out of the hospital Wed. This was fun. First, there is no wheelchair from the bed to the curb here. Again, I got the "Crazy Yank" look when I asked for it. So we navigate the maze that is the hospital and go outside and....no parking garage. So I have to call Ted for directions to parking deck as there is no sign for it. Great, then we walk 1000 kilometers (alright fine, maybe about 2 blocks, but it felt like a long time) and then as we walk up into garage I see large sign saying, "PAY HERE BEFORE LEAVING" Crud. Ted has left ticket on dashboard for me. So Teddy and I walk to car, get ticket and walk back to payment booth. When I tried to put the ticket in I learned that I had gotten the wrong damn ticket. Sigh...leave son on curb, run to car grab ticket, NOT on dashboard but on steering wheel and head back. Get in line, pull money out to pay, it's $12 and I only have $8. No credit cards. Swearing loudly, grab poor Teddy and walk back to hospital, find ATM, not wanting to need more money later on, get out $50 and walk back. Fine. We've made it. Put ticket in machine again and look up to see dollars taken. $5, 10 and 20. No $50. So I look at my money again, to make sure it's $50. It is. I look back up at sign to see if it really says 5, 10 and 20...it does. You know how you look up and down at things over and over hoping that one of the times something will change? Well that was me. Bobbing my head like that damn bird sitting on the glass of water. Oddly enough...nothing changed. So grabbed kid, found cafe and bought a bottle of soda for $3 and drink for son and finally had to change to leave. Things have to get better right?