Real Men Wear Pink

Aleck is doing great.  He’s been down to about one fall a week which is a huge change from the 2 falls a day before.  I can turn my back on him while he was walking down our hallway, or let him play unsupervised for about 5 minutes so I could throw in a load of laundry or make my bed.  But while we are out and about either Craig or I have to stay right by him, trying to make ourselves into his own personal bubble just in case he looses his balance, but last week he lost it even though I was standing right next to him.  We were at a friend’s house, hadn’t quite finished the tour of their gorgeous home, when he had what looked like his standard tumble.  His feet lost their footing, his legs twisted, and timber, down he went.  Lately, when he’s falling like this he starts to cry, I pick him up, and he almost immediately instructs me to put him back down on his feet again.  He is one seriously tough little dude.  But this time was different, so I looked at my friends and kindly asked them in which bathroom would they prefer Aleck use to throw up in, since very often vomitting is close behind his uncontrolable sobbing.  Even with our phones out we had a tough time calming him down, but managed to keep him happy enough to somewhat salvage the rest of the evening and enjoy dinner and visiting.  Aleck even went to play with their son in their living room, where they “shared” their Legos.

We knew this kind of crying meant a real injury but stopping our evening to go to the emergency room seemed like a total waste of time.  We’ve been there before.  Whatever doctor on call is going to look at us and say, “Arthrogry…what? Can you spell that?” and then we will have devoted hours to waiting, x rays, and watching the doctors try to figure out everything “wrong” with Aleck, not just the affected part of his body.  So we waited until first thing Tuesday morning to see Aleck’s surgeon in her trauma clinic.  X rays were awful, he can’t turn his arm the way they need it for the Xrays and on top of it his arm is killing him so it’s incredibly painful.  To get a decent shot I ended up having to hold him practically upside down so they could get a good angle and even then they weren’t sure if he’d broken anything so we decided to play it safe and treat him for a hairline fracture, after all, what’s 3 weeks in an arm cast once you’ve done 6 weeks in a spica cast, a walk in the park I say, a walk in the park.  I guess that’s the good thing about having already gone through so much medically with your child, it takes so much more to rock you.  When asked what color he wanted we thought he’d say red, orange, or even green, but he picked pink.  So we pretended like he hadn’t made his selection, after all kids his age change their minds 5 times in 15 minutes, and then when it was the only part that needed to be done to the cast, we asked him again and he picked pink again.  Craig and I just looked at each other like, why not?  Plus he looks so cute in that pink cast, walking around our house without a shirt on, his big white weightlifting like orthotic belt and metal cables running down his legs, he’s friggin Robocop, he looks so hardcore cute I smile everytime I see him.

After that ordeal we headed over to meet with Aleck’s Ear Nose and Throat who scoped his little nose just long enough to verify that his adenoids are still at least 80% blocking his nasal passages if not more, but with Aleck screaming his face off for the third time that morning the doc decided not to take his time getting an accurate measurement.  They are blocking his nose enough that they need to come out, soon.  When Aleck was done and calmed down I put him back on his feet and he wandered out into the hallway after the doctor and said, “Thank you doctor Holinger” in the sweetest little voice, I just about died.  I mean, what kid thanks their doctor for strapping them down and shoving a camera up their nose, my little man, that’s who!  The doctor thought I had told him to say that, as if.

At the end of the month Aleck gets to go to his first day of preschool in his pink cast, an entire blog in itself, and then miss the rest of the week for his second round of adenoid surgery.  We figured he’s already got a cast on, why not throw this at him too?  We’ve already put the order in for this to be an overnight stay at the hospital and they’ve secured us a room on the 20th floor so we can be comfortable and have space to take care of our sweet little patient.  And here we go again, surgery #5 on the 27th and we keep asking if Lurie provides a punchcard, get 5 surgeries and your 6th is free, how cool would that be?