Landon's Monday

Again, these are Landon's thoughts with clarifying thoughts in brackets added by the editor and conversation labeled accordingly.

Mom: "Landon, do you remember Monday?"

Landon: "No, not one little bit."

"I am going to say one word and then see if you remember Monday."

"Ok"

"Playground"

"Yes! I remember Monday."

"Do you remember Monday morning?"

"Yes, well, no I don't. No I don't remember anything, not much, no not anything . Monday afternoon I remember a little. "I remember in the afternoon I was playing with Jack, playing 'Build a Castle.' It is where you build a castle out of cards and blankets (as hills) and we have someone attack it and then, Boom! we are done unless we want to play again. "Mom interrupted us and she wanted to go to the playground. I said no, Jack said no, so she went to the girls and asked them and they said no, so we delayed it a bit. She came back later and asked again and we said no but she said 'lets go.' So Jack, Bria and I went to the playground with Mom. I did not want to, it wasn't exciting.

We walked there and I saw the usual: a slide, things to climb on, rings, and a bunch of stuff.

Mom, "Did you just stand there and stare at it?"

Landon, "No. It was a rainy day, wet from the rain in the morning. I went to climb on the rings. The rings were wet, slippery and wavered."

"Wavered?"

"Yeah, wavered back and forth. I climbed up to them, first Bria went across then I swung on one of them, started to climb across and I fell, about a 5 foot drop, and broke my wrist. No my arm. It felt terrible, worse than 3 bumble bees stinging you. I got up and with Mom, Jack and Bria we walked down to wait for Dad to bring the car out. Dad and Mom and I drove to the hospital with fuzzy [favorite blue blanket] There were about 3 to 4 round-a-bouts on the way there and it really hurt to go around them.

"At the hospital we went to the emergency room. I was one of the first people to get out of the waiting room. There were others there who were probably waiting for hour and hours.

"We went to the room and a man made a makeshift sling for me, he talked, we went up the elevator to the x-ray room, [Dad went with me] then back downstairs to the waiting room and there we waited a long time. They put a needle in my arm and drew blood and put a 'port' in my arm. There they gave me some painkiller that wasn't working. When they came back mom told them it wasn't working so they gave me some more and we waited and waited. It worked better and we waited. And we waited some more. Because I ate half an orange and a carrot at 4pm we had to wait for surgery until 10pm. [Dad went home] They took me to my room where we waited and waited and waited."

Mom, "Did you have a roommate?"

"Yes, she was there because she had kidney stones, she was only 10 years old. There was a TV in the room. You could raise and lower the bed! The room was very dark at night."

[8:30pm Dad and Betsy came to visit and brought some stuff for us. 10 pm Surgery:]

"I didn't like surgery. [But it wasn't as bad as I was scared it would be] I was not awake for the surgery. They gave me anesthesia. They did not inject it into me, I just breathed it in through a tube. I fell asleep. I woke up in the recovery room [the same room as the operating room]. Mom was there when I woke up. Waking up I felt sleepy, and my arm didn't feel very good. We waited there a long time.

"We went back to my room and switched beds but then the guy remembered we had to go for an x-ray so we went back down for that and came back to my room. I finally was able to go to sleep. [12:20 am] It was not easy to go to sleep. In the middle of the night I woke and I needed to use the bathroom and then I was wide awake. Mom left me play games on the mini ipad: World of Goo, Math Ahoy, and Fruit Ninja. I did finally go back to sleep after mom told me I had to.

"In the morning I woke up as my roommate got ready to leave and go home. [She had been there a whole week] I was very hungry. I got a very junky breakfast, well, pretty junky and then a doctor came in and showed us the x-rays and we waited until the nurse came. She didn't speak very good English. She took out my port and after that Dad, Betsy, Jack, and Bria came. We left to go to the desk, paid, and went to the parking garage. There we remembered Dad forgot the papers from the doctor at the desk so he ran back for them. When he went back, there were more charges that they had overlooked the first time so he had to pay that too!"

[The fracture was a full break of the radius and ulna letting his lower forearm in a 'Z' shape. Surgery was needed to set the bones and the surgeon placed two, to be removed, pins in his arm, they are hidden by the cast. He is recovering nicely and only needed about 2 doses of ibuprophen since we are home for pain control. Some time in the next week to 10 days we need to find a hospital and have his arm checked as the doctor is concerned that some shifting could occur as swelling recedes and more movement is allowed. We are headed to Italy, hopefully Italian healthcare professionals speak good English... We will need to get the cast cut open to fly home in January but other than that he is good to go.]