Casted

It finally happened, a cast has been placed on one of the Fitz-kids. Mia, of course. She'd already had a rough day, by noon she had a goose egg in the middle of her forehead because she ran from me instead of to me when I called for her and she smacked her head on a wooden beam on Ben's bed. That's what we like to call a "natural consequence".

Then, minutes before I needed to walk out the door for my CPR certification class, Mia fell off the couch. And she cried. This cry was different. It was a "I broke a bone" cry. This cry kept her/me up most of the night.

In the morning I knew I needed to take her to see a doctor but I wasn't sure to where. The pediatrician didn't have an x-ray machine, urgent care couldn't cast it if it needed it, so a friend suggested I go straight to a pediatric orthopedic doctor, so that's what we did. It took half the morning for me to figure that out.

The other half of the morning was spent at the DMV waiting to get a copy of my driving record. (Adoption certification stuff. I can think about two babies at once.) :)

**FYI: DMV appointment times hold about as much weight as doctor appointment times.**

It was also the day we had chosen to celebrate Ben's birthday at school, so there was that blip in my schedule as well.

Mia wasn't the happiest of campers throughout the day, but as long as I was holding her she was fine, which is not too far from a typical day anyway.

We made our way to the ped.ortho.doc for our 4:00 appointment time. At 5:15 we were seen, x-rayed and yep, she needed a cast for her nicely fractured tiba.



This is why I'm not too bummed:

~ It's wintertime - but not too cold that she requires snow boots to go outside.
~ It's not summertime - so water and sand are not an issue.
~ She was given a short cast, and can walk on it anytime she feels so inclined, which hopefully will be soon.
~ I have sweet friends who swooped my kids up and took them away so I could concentrate on fixing Mia.
~ When those kids came back to me, and Mia wasn't yet fixed, and hours of waiting loomed, I was confident I could take them with me with little to no problem and they would survive. And they did, and had better attitudes than I did at times.

Here's the clincher: in order to get to Mia's doctor's office we had to walk through CHOC hospital. Up an elevator, down an elevator, through this hall and that. During our jaunt we came across little kids, big kids, toddlers and babies, sick as sick can be. Bald heads, ashy skin, shallow eyes, one was carrying a barf bag. And we smiled and chatted with a few, but inside I felt embarrassed. I had SO many friends calling and texting to check in on the Meems. Friends praying and asking what they could do to help. And really, her hot pink casted fracture is like a Band-Aid on a splinter compared to those tiny, precious children in that hospital. And I almost didn't want to look at the few parents I saw because the wounds they wear are gashes and mine is a hangnail.



So we came home and Mark was here with our late dinner ready and waiting. I couldn't get over the day I had and how richly blessed I felt. Not just because of CHOC, but because a week ago I was feeling hopeless (more to come on that...) And on a day when, by anyone's standards, I could've thrown in the towel and poured myself the mother of all glasses of whine, instead the Lord saw it fit to remind me of the blessing of life. And for the next 4 weeks I have a little cutie wearing a hot pink cast to remind me as well.