The Great Big Sucking Vortex of the Last 48 Hours

Hannah came home from school on Thursday at about 2 with two classmates in tow to work on a class project. That's when she informed me that she had taken a spill in the hall at school and her arm hurt, just above her wrist. I wrapped it up with the bandage left over from when she sprained her other wrist last fall and gave her a cold pack and an ibuprofen. She held her arm still all afternoon, but otherwise she seemed ok, ok enough to do a half-assed job on her project and watch videos online with her friends. I tried to call the pediatrician's office but didn't manage to get through, so I figured we'd keep it wrapped and wait and see.

Just before her friends were going to leave, she discovered that her mouse Dickerchen, aka Vanessa, was dead in her cage. That night, Hannah wanted to sleep with us. The next morning, she discovered that the other mouse, Isabelle, aka Pipsqueak, was also dead. Friday morning was rough. When Pipsqueak developed her tumor, we had started discussing where we could possibly bury her. There is no yard attached to our apartment, just a square of dirt next to the front door that is mostly taken up with a giant pine and a bunch of bushes, but Hannah didn't want to put the mice there because she thinks it is full of refuse from passing teenagers. (She has a pretty poor opinion of teenagers for someone who claims she basically is one.) John and I had been thinking we could take them up to the woods, but Hannah didn't want them to get dug up by wild animals, or for someone to come along and mess with the marker she had made, and she thought it was too far to go to visit them. Hannah asked me if we could bury them on the balcony in the same pot with one of the walnut trees, so that is where we interred them.



John and I had wanted to go for a short hike with the other May Day celebrants in our village, but Hannah complained of grief, depression, tummy ache, diarrhea, and pretty much everything short of plague. She didn't look like she felt very well, but she is averse to physical activity and the great outdoors, so we weren't completely sure that it wasn't a put-on, but we stayed home and went ahead and cancelled our dinner-date for that evening. Then she started complaining that her arm hurt, so we ended up taking her to the emergency room (May 1 is a holiday). An x-ray showed that she has a Radiuswulstfraktur, which I think roughly translates to a green-stick fracture. She ended up with a shoulder-to-hand cast.



The whole emergency room trip took about 4 hours, even though it didn't seem especially busy there. We went back and forth between the examining room and various waiting rooms, and since we weren't sure when we might be called for the different procedures, we didn't want to leave to go find some dinner, even though Hannah was starving. We were finally able to eat at about 8 and then drive home.

I have to do the grocery shopping this morning before taking Hannah back to the ER to have the cast checked again. Then on Tuesday we go to the orthodontist to have a new mold made of Hannah's teeth for her activator. Then on Wednesday we go back to the ER for one last check of the cast, then she should get the cast off 3 days after her birthday. *sigh* This is going to be some long-lasting suck.