The Adventures of Little Miss Daredevil and the Slide of Doom

We've been really lucky so far with the health of Miss B. She's been ill a few times and required a trip to the local minor injuries unit to get a bump patched up, but until now we've avoided hospital. In fact, we're still very lucky as this first hospitalisation was a relatively minor injury and some very straightforward treatment. Anyway, to the story...

In our garden we have a slide. It's one of those little plastic ones with three steps and is all of two feet tall at its highest point. Miss B loves it, even though she is now rather too big for it. She slides down it happily, even though her feet nearly reach the bottom when she is sitting at the top, and she jumps from the top of the steps for dramatic effect (3-year-olds seem to like jumping).

So on Sunday afternoon, Miss B was playing in the garden and <3 and I had gone inside for a while, when we heard a scream that sounded a bit more serious than one which accompanies "I have wet socks" so we got outside PDQ to find the little monkey lying on the ground, holding her arm.

Now, my medical training amounts to a couple of half day first aid courses, so I'm no expert, but I was pretty sure that arms bend at the elbow and wrist, but not usually anywhere in between, so the diagnosis was pretty obvious. We figured it would be best to splint the arm, so with a large wooden spoon tied on by a couple of muslin squares, we got into the car for the drive to the John Radcliffe hospital. After some tears, B fell asleep for most of the journey.

At the hospital we went through a series of reception, triage (where we had the "oh, so you're the girl with the wooden spoon!"), X-ray, minor injuries, kiddies minor injuries (where they put on a temporary plaster splint), back to X-ray, and then finally up to a ward. During this we learned that B had a clean break of both ulna and radius, and that the plan was to put her under general anaesthetic in the morning in order to straighten the arm properly and put on a proper cast. B was a proper little star through all of this, going through the whole process without complaint — other than some frustration that putting Lego blocks together was much harder with only one functional arm.

So we did a bit of parent juggling with me going home to get some changes of clothing and have something to eat while <3 put B to bed, then <3 going home for the night while I got what sleep I could on the couch in B's bay on the ward. At least B managed to get a reasonable amount of sleep despite her arm being strapped up in an elevated position, which made her usual night time wriggling slightly comical.

<3 was back with us nice and early and a couple of hours we all trooped down to the trauma theatres (with B looking like the Queen of Sheba as she was wheeled along on her bed). The only tears we had during our time at hospital was when Miss B decided she didn't want to wear the hospital gown that she had been given. Anyway, the little'un was put under (with one of the ward's "play specialists" blowing bubbles to distract her and <3 and I were at last able to get off for a cuppa (no hot drinks allowed on the kids' wards).

We collected B from theatre a little over an hour later and found her in the recovery room looking dazed and groggy but generally OK. Back on the ward, her recovery was impressive: it wasn't long before she was eating toast and drinking squash like it was going out of fashion.

The rest of the day was a bit boring as we waited for the OK to take B home, but this was livened up a little by a trip to the trauma unit to get the plaster cast reinforced with a nice pink covering. This trip took a little longer than planned as our guide got lost on the way — it turns out that the children's wards don't often have much to do with the trauma unit, so some of the staff had never been there before!

Miss B was discharged at about 3pm, so home we went (via a shop where we had promised to buy her a new cuddly toy — she chose a Tigger) and she has been fine since. She's not even requiring pain relief now. There'll be a few more check-up appointments to come over the next few minutes, and we still have some sleep to catch up on, but all is well now.