Sunday, September 16, 2012

Hospital Adventures - December 2011


Heavens, where does the time go. The idea of keeping up this whole blog has rather gone by the way it seems, but the least I can do I suppose is document at least a few of the important things. Nw I simply have to find the time to catch up. First up... a nasty little injury:

10th Dec 2011. Friday afternoon and I'm home from school, just had lunch, settling down for a little comic writing.

Phone calls from school are rarely good news, don't you think?

And this one was no exception. Molly's had a little accident on the trampolene they say, we think her arm may be a touch broken they say. Perhaps you'd like to pick her up they say.

Got to school, loaded her into the car, and did my best to assure her, on a long journey to York hospital, complete with a few brilliantly timed wrong turns, that yes, perhaps there was achance it wasn't broken after all (it was), perhaps it was merely a really nasty bruise (it wasn't), and of course they wouldn't have to keep her in (that was looking more and more likely).

York hospital were ace, which was fortunate really, since we were going to be spending a lot of time there over the next few days. Molly was amazingly brave, and only got a little bit upset when we saw the x-ray. Ouch. Both radius and ulna broken, and not good breaks either. Yes, it was definite, we were in overnight, and Molly would need an operation to rod and plate the bones. General anaesthetic and everything.

But she was ever so brave, took it (pretty much) all in her stride, was even rather looking forward to us naffing off, seeing as she'd worked out how to get the bed TV to work and was looking forward to movies through the night. We think she got some sleep that night, she assures us she did, but I'm not so sure. She'd also found the teenage room, complete with Internet. Which meant Facebook, which meant EVERYONE knew what was going on, well before we actually had a chance to tell anyone.

Next morning, another trip to York hospital car park, up to the ward, Molly's understandably nervous about the op, seeing as they're talking about cutting her arm open on her inside forearm, fixing the bones back together, and then either putting a metal plate in to hold them or inserting metal rods into her arms through elbow and wrist to hold it all together. In the end it was the rods, as we found out a couple of hours later when a very groggy, post anaesthetic little girl comes back to the ward. We've obviously done something right, as a very drugged up Molly still managed a bleary wave and a thank you to all the nurses and staff en route.


Everything went well of course, and she's just got to sleep it off for a while. A long while it turns out. Finally, around teatime, we get the news that she's staying in another night. Cue more Facebook and planning what films she's going to watch.

Finally home on Sunday, and crash out for the rest of the day.

It's never fun to break anything, but there's a certain rite of passage element to it. I'm sure Molly would rather not have gone through all the pain and trauma of falling badly on her arm on the school trampoline, of the operation, of the various problems with recovering. But I'm also sure it's one of those things she'll look back on well, memory making the pain seem lesser and the experience so much greater.

I wouldn't wish a break on her, certainly not, but looking back it means she's had a very different experience, and can tick off another of those milestones. Something she's sadly doing more and more as she gets older and older and older, a little girl no more, and daddy turns to dad, and something wonderful seems lost. But as I keep finding out as the years go by, every time I think it's gone, every time I catch myself looking back with regret that things are lost, I look at her now, at the different but just as wonderful thing she's become. And the smile comes back. Keep ticking the experience boxes.

One very nice thing about it all - after announcing her hospital stay live from hospital on FB & Twitter - we get these back from comic people; Adam Cadwell, Sarah McIntyre, and Neill Cameron.




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