Emergency visit.

Nothing in life can hurt your heart like the sound of your child in desperate tears of pain. You feel so profoundly helpless, especially when they're crying so hard they cannot articulate what hurts, let alone what happened to cause the hurt.

That happened today. My boy (on Steemit his name shall be Inari) was sitting on the bed watching while the girls and I bustle about, getting ready to go out.

Then, to my eyes, literally just sitting on the bed, he is gasping in pain, crying his little heart out. For no immediately apparent reason! When he calms down it's his thumb. Being an 8-year-old Incredible Hulk he tried to get off the bed using only his fingertips, and his wrist rolled.

Swollen, hot, painful with his thumb tip numb, I decided he needed to go in.

It's a six block walk to the emergency room, not bad at all if your child isn't hurting and it isn't -4° outside. But we walk a lot, so he managed it like a trooper.

He told them on a scale of 1-10 he was at about a 6. He's always trying to be such a stoic guy, I know it had to have been hurting more than that since he wasn't even watching the television or playing, just staring off into space, looking lost.

They finally called us back and we sit and wait for an hour for a doctor to come in, poke at him enough to make him drop a few silent tears, order the X-rays and leave. More time passes and my sweet boy is brought back.

And then we wait, and wait, and wait some more.

The diagnosis, three hours after we walked through the door. Not broken. Thank goodness! The relief of those words is a physical release. The tightness in your chest comes loose and you can breathe again.

Inari has sprained it, though, so all is not perfect in his world. He'll need to rest it for a week or so, ice and some Motrin to keep the pain under control. Any tips on how to keep a boisterous young boy calm for a whole week would be appreciated. 💙💙💙

I think mommy needs a nap.