Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Glorya's Health-from the Beginning


What’s Up with Glorya?
Part 1-How it Started
On 12/26/11 I broke my hand.  We woke up the day after Christmas at my mother-in-law’s big beautiful house in Ashton, VA. The 5 boy cousins had slept in the basement & my middle son, Tyson, came upstairs complaining of a headache. He doesn’t usually complain about physical ailments unless he’s really sick. I took his temperature & sure enough, he was sick. (It was over 102). I give him ibuprofen & put him in our room, which has its own bathroom to quarantine him from the rest of the kids. 

A few hours later my sister in law says that her son has a fever & was throwing up the night before.  Great. Not sure which came first my son’s fever or hers but I wasn’t as worried about the boys hanging out together.  Then my oldest son, Trey, says he doesn’t feel well…yet another fever. Trey was lying on the soft leather couch & all I could think of was, “there’s no way to sterilize a leather couch!” So I sent him upstairs after giving him some ibuprofen. I quarantined the 2 boys in the upstairs bedroom as I am suspecting strep throat. (We tend to get strep every couple of months.)

 But the DVD player in our room wasn’t working, and the TV wasn’t connected to a cable line so I went to another room to find a DVD player. All the other rooms had TV/DVD/Blu Ray combos so I carried the TV combo to the room. The boys were on the bed & couldn’t see the TV on the floor. So I moved the chaise, a lovely small couch at the end of our brass bed to put the TV on top. Well, unfortunately, the brass footboard was NOT connected to the frame of the bed & came banging down on my hand like a hammer on a nail. Ouch! It hurt but mommas keep moving, right? So I got them handled & went back downstairs to get ice for my hand & popsicles for my feverish boys.

Later that afternoon DJ took them to the doctor & they had strep throat. I finally was cancelled from work as I had been on call all morning. I’m a critical care RN & I was awaiting a phone call from the Open Heart unit at the hospital to see if a particular critical patient was still in need of individualized care. Not sure how the patient faired but it did turn out that they didn’t need me & clearly my kids did so all was well.

My hand continued to hurt over the next week…I worked two 12 hour shifts & at the end of the 2nd one I was really hurting. More ice, a little rest, it still hurt. I went to my small group meeting, a bible study of a few families from our church, Grace Community Church in Fulton) & I was gingerly holding it while I got my food. My small group is made up of 3 female doctors, no, 4 female doctors, a lawyer, some high level military & government people etc. & so I had one of docs look at my hand. Julie was straightforward, “You already know there's a problem. You have point tenderness & pain despite ice & rest. You need to get it x-rayed.” I knew it was sore for a ridiculous amount of time (think it was 8 or 9 days since the incident). So we left small group & went to Righttime Urgent Care. (I later learned they placed a friendly bet on me returning to small group the next week in a cast) I probably should’ve just gone to the hospital. They said it wasn’t broken, gave me a splint & told me to follow up with an orthopedic in 3 days if it wasn’t better. So I went to work, with the splint, & it was still super sore. 

I follow up with the orthopedist & get another x-ray. He says, “You don’t have a fracture” & I say, “What about that?” pointing to a crack in my trapezoid bone. And he looks at it again, exclaiming, “I’ve NEVER seen this before! I have to show this to my colleague!”  So he hurries out the room to email it to a hand specialist. He comes back to report his findings to me. “So you did in fact break your trapezoid bone. I’ve never seen it & the hand specialist says he’s only seen it twice in his 20 years of practice!” Again, wonderful! I break a bone that’s not much bigger than a pea; all while moving furniture to protect the extended Jordan Household from strep throat. So they put me in a cast, purple of course. J

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