it's just a little break

"I think I dislocated my elbow," Jeremiah bellowed as he ran in from jumping on the trampoline. (Damn, I knew that thing was going to catch up with us someday!)

"Dislocated?" I ask. Is that why the darn thing looks kind of inside out and the rest of your arm is hanging down like a limp fish? "John fix it!" I yelled. After all he played sports. He comes from a family of five boys. They all played sports. Surely he knows how to relocate a dislocated joint, right?

Turns out, John's more squeamish than I am. Takes one look at it, looks at me, gets pale and goes to get the car. "We're going to the emergency room!"

But Jeremiah's kinda moaning, not in great pain, but I can tell the whole thing is just grossing him out and I'm wondering how he's going to do on the drive over the emergency room ... and how John and I are going to do on the drive over. And I know when we get there, someone's just going to pop it back into place and hand us a huge bill. I remember that somewhere along the line I heard that you can just pop these misbehaving joints back into place. Moms do that all the time, right?

So I take Jeremiah's hand and say, let's try to straighten out this arm. And he does and pop - there goes one bone back into place. And we straighten some more and pop - there goes the other one. Elbow good as new. I give him some rescue remedy, rub some comfry on the elbow and give him an icepack. I mean, I was a Peace Corps volunteer; I lived in the bush in Africa. I could give myself a tracheotomy if I needed to. Who needs trained medical professionals?

Well, it turns out, we did. 'Cause the next day, his arm was still hurting him and he was holding it funny (although that joint was holding up just fine, I'm proud to report). But it turns out, in addition to the dislocation, he also chipped a bone and the doctor is recommending surgery to repair it.

But I'm thinking about just getting out the Crazy Glue . . .

I'll keep you posted,
Eve