The Bicycle Accident

I was at Harris Teeter on Saturday when I got the call "Mom, Preston is hurt.  Dad wants to know if we should go to urgent care." I had no idea what to expect as I was racing home but just assumed that since Preston was riding bikes with Dave it was just a minor injury and he needed a little TLC from mom.  However, in a matter of minutes, I quickly realized this was quite a bit more serious.  His face hurt really bad, his chin was gashed open and his arm was in considerable pain as well.  Dave took my car to deliver the groceries and Preston and I raced to the local pediatric urgent care.  About three minutes after arrival, we were being seen by the doctor, who was talking to Dave on speakerphone, while I was answering a million questions from the nurses in the room.  The doctor was very calm and just said this was beyond his scope of care.  He had the nurse hand me the address to Levine Children's Hospital uptown and said to go. . . he would take care of sending our paperwork.

3:30pm after arriving at the hospital uptown

We arrived uptown around 3:30 and were quickly checked into the children's ER.  The new few hours were very long and scary.  We went to radiology three times for different scans and then there was LOTS of waiting as different residents and doctors came in.  The most difficult news came around 8pm when we found out from the plastics trauma surgeon on call that he would indeed need surgery because the jaw was broken on both sides.

11:36 pm waiting for a room to be ready on the children's trauma floor

The decision was made to admit Preston and schedule the surgery for early Sunday morning.  Dr. Morgan would perform the jaw surgery and then the ortho surgeon would scrub in to cast his arm, which was also fractured.  It was a LONG wait to finally be admitted to the children's floor, but we were finally "settled" about 1:15am.

Dave came Sunday morning after dropping Savannah at the Marion's house for the day.  This little guy was SO anxious and worried about the surgery, his biggest fear being that he would wake up while they were operating.  

We got a call right before it was time to wheel down to the OR that we had a gift at the reception area.  Dave went down and to find a soccer teammate brought these ballons and a precious card for Preston.  They truly made his day and made the worry about surgery subside for a bit.

Before we knew it, we were waiting in preop for surgery to begin.  The orthopedic specialist came and after consulting several doctors, they determined a cast would not be needed since the ulna was just bent, not completely broken.  As long as we could ensure Preston would be super careful, they were fine with him continuing to wear just the splint that is removable for showering.  Hallelujah!  The nurses in preop were amazing.  They could sense Preston was getting more and more anxious so they started the silly medicine and it wasn't long after that he was off . . . which was tremendously hard to let him go, but the Lord was faithful and returned him to us safely in a matter of hours.  The surgeon came out and said everything went well and that he ended up being able to use super strong elastics instead of wire, which was another blessing.  Preston was back with us by 3 and as promised we were there as he was waking up.  We all agreed staying another night in the hospital was best to make sure he was okay being wired all shut and to get the pain under control.

We were loved so well . . . not only by our friends and family who called, texted, and most importantly prayed for Preston., but also by the amazing team of nurses and doctors at LCH.  Thankfully Preston was discharged around 2pm on Monday and we headed home to get him settled.

 Finally, home sweet home!