We arrive at Vanderbilt. I pull up to the emergency room entrance, and let Jeff get out and pull William out. He had slept the entire way up, so this wasn’t exactly welcome from his standpoint.

Jeff takes him inside the Emergency room while I race into the adjoining parking garage. They tell me later that I should have left the van outside and let the valets take care of it. I didn’t see any, and didn’t know about it then, but it all works out. By the time I find a spot and get back to the ER, Jeff is in a wheelchair with William in her arms about to be rolled back.

We’re taken into the hallway to get treated while a room is cleaned. I don’t know what Jeff told them when she took him in, but it worked. We moved into an area, and they began to prep to put an IV in William. A Children’s Life Specialist (and intern… it is a university hospital after all) came out with Toys and tried her best to distract William as they began to put the IV in. You’ll note, I said, Tried. It didn’t work very well. The first prick of that needle, and William wanted nothing to do with her or the toys.

Unfortunately, William had been screaming and crying for quite some time today, so his little blood vessels were truly microscopic. We didn’t succeed in the hallway.

Trauma 2 had opened up at this point, and we were moved into it quickly. The RN on duty there gave it a shot getting the IV in, and after a couple of attempts, she was able to get a good stick. The Children’s Life Specialist tried to give the toys to William at this time, but sensing a trap, William wanted nothing to do with them. He got his first taste of Morphine at this time, which went a far way to helping ease his pain.

We talked to the Trauma doctor, and he immediately put in for a consult from the Orthopedic department. The general and fairly immediate reaction was “Get more Xrays” and “We’ll need to do a Spica”

Jeff begins to get ill at this point again. Bless her heart, she didn’t feel good when this started, and it seemed that every time we got into a hospital, she started to feel worse. I took William (and little did I know at the time, but I ended up keeping him the rest of the evening), and sent Jeffie out into the hall to get some air. They keep the trauma rooms quite warm since their almost always stripping the patients down for exam.

The Children’s life specialist was coming at this point to talk about the cast, saw Jeff sitting in the floor in the hall, and immediately went to take care of her. After some crackers and water, we were introduced to some pictures of the cast that would be part of our life for the next 6 weeks.

Xrays followed, which pretty much confirmed what the previous xrays showed pretty plainly. William was slightly easier this time around, thanks to the Morphine. The second xrays were important, however, because there was concern that something inate to the bone may have contributed to the injury, such as a hollow, or reduced bone mass. Thankfully, those fears were without merit.

Further conversations with the Orthopedic and Trauma doctors agreed that a Spica cast would be needed, and that they would be placing that cast on in the operating room when a spot developed.

We waited down in trauma 2 for another hour or so, William on my chest, head on shoulder.