A Mother’s Journey Through My Daughter’s Medical Crisis
Our experience with an elbow dislocation
The thump against the wall was so loud I felt it in my chest. I dropped the razor in my hand and braced for what I knew would come next. One of my daughters would open the bathroom door to yell that the other was hurt. A sound like that always followed with an injury, and I wouldn’t be washing the conditioner out of my hair that morning. I’d be in the hospital instead.
The injury
A few weeks ago, my mini-teen slipped and slammed into the wall in her bedroom. I was in a post-run shower, and my teenager flung open the bathroom door. “Mom, she hurt her elbow, and it’s bad,” she dictated in a calm, robotic voice, directing her sister to sit on the hallway floor. Her newly acquired first aid skills learned as a lifeguard were already needed.
With the towel secured, I looked at her elbow and immediately said, “It’s dislocated.”
I’ve never seen a dislocation before, but one look at the deformed joint sticking out to the side in an unnatural state convinced me that’s what it was
“This is going to be fine,” I tried to calm my mini-teen as I directed her to put her head between her legs as the overwhelming pain turned her an alarming shade of ashen gray. Moms…
