Thora's First Trauma (Don't panic, she's fine!)

Here is the story of Thora's first trauma... a dislocated elbow. First let me say that she is absolutely fine and in the course of the entire ordeal, she probably suffered less than 20 minutes of acute pain. Don't get me wrong. I know that is a lot for a baby. But when viewed among other childhood injuries, like a broken bone for example, it seems rather short.

She had been trying to climb up on the wicker trunk we have in the living room (see photo above). It is less than two feet high. And while she tries to get on it repeatedly throughout the day, (and we constantly make her get down), our real concern has been her standing on it, or rather, her falling off of it while standing. I never would've guessed, watching what she had been doing, that there was any risk for a joint un-socketing.

Anyway, she was laying on the top of the wicker trunk, sprawled out on her tummy, gripping the sides in each hand, when lost her balance and the left side of her body slid off the edge. I didn't see any cause for alarm in watching this happen, because as I said, her feet would've been mere inches from the ground and she could've just stood up. However, she must've held on too tight with her right hand as she fell to her left, and perhaps wrenching it in just the right way caused her elbow to pop out of the socket. I watched it happen; it took mere seconds. My immediate hypothesis was that she must've scraped herself on some loose piece of the wicker. She hadn't fallen, so I admit I was baffled as to why she was screaming so hard. (The poor thing was trembling.) After holding her, and trying to search out the cut, scrape, or bruise and not finding anything, I began feeling around for broken bones. A dislocated elbow is pretty subtle, well, for a non-doctor, that is. In fact, it took me a minute or two even to determine which limb was hurting her and even then, once I figured out it was her right arm, I assumed it was a dislocated shoulder. I never guessed it was the elbow until the doctor started working on it at the office.

Anyway, I called her pediatrician and was told that they could squeeze us in 45 minutes. I laid Thora on our bed in a big nest of pillows and she practically fell into a trance. I think after feeling the pain so acutely, now that she was lying there and the pain had stopped, she became totally relaxed, practically drowsy. She lay there, lazily watching me as I scrambled around getting us ready to leave for the hospital. (I was still in my pajamas when this happened.) Thora suffered a brief minute or two more of pain while I dressed her in some easy-on-and-off clothes--it was cold today or else I wouldn't have bothered dressing her at all--and put her in the stroller. Again, the pain subsided almost immediately and she relaxed during the trip on the train to the doctor's office. In fact, she was completely herself, getting excited about the trains charging in and out of the station, hollering "wooo wooo" at the ambulances parked near the entrance of the hospital, etc. She was totally herself, except that her poor right arm sat limp at her side. But as long as she didn't have to move it, she seemed to be in no pain. Not even the somewhat bumpy ride in the stroller bothered her.

Once there, we met with a doctor who after getting as much information from me as possible, and after doing some brief exploratory examinations, tried (very quickly, so as not to cause her more pain) to pop the elbow back in. She couldn't quite get it, after just a quick try, and so got her colleague to come give it a go. He had me put Thora on my lap facing out, and while holding her elbow in place, flexed her wrist up to her shoulder three times. I heard the soft pop after just the first flex. He said that I should wait ten minutes or so, periodically checking her abiliity to move her arm, to see if she could move it around on her own. He said the final test would be to put her on the ground and if she can reach both arms up to ask to be picked up, she's fine. Well, we hardly needed ten minutes. In less than one minute, she was raising her previously-injured arm at the elbow and pointing at the baby photos on the wall. In less than two minutes, she was holding on to the toys that I'd brought. After 3 or 4 minutes, she was mimicking me reaching both hands up to the ceiling "Strrrretch!". Basically, she was as good as new almost immediately.

So what did I learn from this experience? I'm not sure. That toddlers can injure themselves doing things that look pretty harmless. Yikes. I don't want to learn that! I learned from talking to some of Sean's co-workers (the one silver lining in all of this is that Sean got a visit from us in the middle of a Labor Floor day and got to show Thora off to his co-workers) is that this is a really common injury and it happens to tons of kids her age. I don't know yet whether she'll be
more susceptible to the same kind of injury in the future, now that it's happened once. I'll need to talk to the pediatrician about that. What did Thora learn from all of this? Absolutely Nothing! She was trying to climb on the wicker trunk exactly 3 minutes from getting
home from the hospital.