Dallin broke his shoulder

One day I was sitting at the computer working on a school assignment, and the elementary school nurse calls and tells me that Dallin had fallen during PE and hurt his shoulder.  I spoke to Dallin on the phone and asked him if he could move his arm around.  He could, so I told the nurse to just give him some Advil and send him back to class.  After a few hours, the nurse called again and said that Dallin was back in the office, and that his shoulder hurt worse than before.  I didn't want to stop my school work, but I gave a big sigh, rolled my eyes and told her that I would be there to pick Dallin up in a few minutes.

I drove him down the street to an Urgent Care that is really quick.  (It is where we took Lauren with 2 of her broken arms.)  The Dr. came out right away to assess Dallin in the lobby and make sure that it wasn't dislocated.  Then they took us back to a room for a more thorough check.  They poked and prodded, and then took some x-rays.  When the Dr. came back in after the x-rays he was surprised to admit that Dallin had broken the tip off of his collar bone.  He didn't think that it was that serious because Dallin could move his arm and wasn't crying in pain.  He told me that this was a painful break, and that Dallin must be pretty tough to be handling it so well.  He showed us the x-rays, and sure enough, there was the tip of the bone hanging down right at the shoulder.  It looked painful, because the collar bone ended in a jagged point where the tip had broken off.  The Dr. referred us to an orthopedic specialist to see if Dallin would need surgery.  Luckily he didn't need it, he just had to wear a brace night and day for 5 weeks, and then another 2 weeks of no running, playing, PE, etc without the brace.

I felt awful!  I had made him sit through hours of classwork because I didn't think it was bad.  I asked Dallin how it had happened.  He said they were playing a game of freeze tag for a warm up in PE, and he went through his friends legs to unfreeze him, and another boy was trying to tag Dallin, and Dallin stumbled, fell (on his shoulder) and then his friend that he had just unfrozen fell on top of him.  Ouch!

 

This picture shows how Dallin's shoulder looked about 12 hours after the break.  It is subtle, but you can see that the left shoulder droops or sags, unlike his right shoulder.  The break happened right where it drops.  After a few days Dallin had a huge bruise along his shoulder.

 

 

The worst pain came when Dallin was sleeping.  He would move and hurt his shoulder.  For about 10 days, he slept propped up, and he always woke up in pain.  He had a prescription for pain and a muscle relaxer, but they didn't seem to help much at night.  With time it got easier, and he got use to the brace.

 

One good thing was that the break happened on the Wed. before spring break.  Dallin couldn't go back to school because every bump and jostle hurt.  At least he only missed 2 days.  On Friday before spring break the 6th grade was having a food festival for their country reports.  Dallin had Northern Ireland, and he really wanted to go and take his food and try all the other food.  So I went with him, and carried his tray of food, and helped him serve it.  He loved the attention from all of his classmates.  Everyone was so nice, and wanted to talk to him about it.  Near the end though, he got bumped, and he turned pale white and asked for a pain pill.  It was time to go.  =)