It happens all the time: Your toddler gets excited in a public place and and tries to bolt. You grab their arm to keep them from getting away, but the next thing you know they have fallen down onto the ground. They start crying so you quickly pick them up, move out of the center of the crowd, and calm them down so you can get back to the fun evening you had planned. Typical, right?

Only this time Hadley didn’t calm down. She just kept screaming. And crying. And saying, “Ouch! Ouch!” and holding on to her arm. That was when we knew something was wrong.

Luckily the fun evening we had planned was a night at John’s Incredible Pizza and there just happens to be an Urgent Care literally across the street. So Sim carried Hadley in his arms, holding her arm in his hand because it was the only way to get her to stop wailing, and we walked over to the Urgent Care. The fates must have been aligned because we hardly even had to wait, there was only one other person in the waiting area and they took us first due to the sobbing baby factor. We got in to the room and they informed us that we were very lucky because there happend to be a pediatrician working that night. So we waited to see the doctor.

The doctor looked at Hadley’s arm, said it was noticeably swollen in not one, but TWO places, and she wanted to X-ray the arm. So off to X-rays we went…

The doctor looked over the X-rays and said she couldn’t see anything broken. Since Hadley’s wrists and the area they were mostly concerned about are basically just cartilage it’s pretty hard to break. But Hadley was obviously in pain so they wanted to get her into a splint to stabilize her arm.

Once she was suffieciently wrapped, splinted, bandaged, and placed in a sling (an adorable tiny sling covered with bears holding balloons, mind you) we were ready to go. As we were walking out the tech who wrapped Hadley’s arm mentioned there might be stickers and Hadley perked up for the first time since we got there.

Armed with her newly beloved Wonder Pets sticker, Hadley was content and remembered that our original plans for the evening included pizza and games so we were ready to resume our evening.

(Hadley, being the wonderful sister she is, made sure to get an extra sticker for Ana who was waiting patiently in the lobby area with our amazing friend Brad.)

So far Hadley is being a trooper and dealing with only being able to use one arm. The splint is helping but occasionally Hadley bumps her arm, winces, and says, “Ouch!” So we are keeping an eye on her and making sure to take it easy. If things don’t get better in a few days the doctor wants us to see an orthopedic specialist (well, we already have one of those from when Hadley broke her leg less than a year ago!). I’m praying we don’t need to go that route. For now, all I can say is at least nothing is broken!