My Broken Arm

July 24, 1963, was a day I never forgot.  It started out as a great day.  Aunt Amy and Uncle Joe and their kids were staying with us up at the cabin.  July 24^th is Pioneer Day, and we were looking forward to celebrating it.  July 24^th was also Uncle Tillis’ birthday, so it became even more exciting. 

Us kids worked together and planned a little program to honor the pioneers.  We tried to dress up like them, too.  Terry and Kathy (by older girl cousins)  had long dresses to wear, and Kathy let me borrow her long moo-moo so I could dress up, too.  We marched along the base of the hill, singing pioneer songs and pulling an old two wheeled wagon that looked like it could have been a hand cart.  It was lots of fun. 

After the program we played on the wagon while the adults went inside grandma’s cabin to visit.   If two people stood, one on either side of the wagon, they could make it go up and down like a teeter-totter.  The older kids took turns, then I wanted to try.  I stood on one side of the wagon and tried to keep standing while Kathy edged back from the middle to the other side.  This forced my end to raise up into the air.  It was hard to hold your balance as the wagon rose, and I stepped backwards to steady myself, catching my foot in the hem of the moo-moo.  I tumbled off the back of the wagon onto the ground.  Kathy fell off the other side, and the wagon came crashing down, hitting my arm.  Kathy ran over to see if I was OK.  I sat up, but my arm looked really funny.   Everyone began running around, crying and screaming, except me.  I just sat there looking at my arm in amazement.

The adults ran out of the cabin.  Mom took one look at my arm, and exclaimed, “That’s broken!”  Their was a funny bump above my wrist, where the bone pushed up.  Uncle Tillis looked at my arm and said the thing to do was to put it on something hard and flat to keep it from moving around and getting hurt worse.  He got a piece of hard cardboard, and mom gently lifted my arm on to it. 

It was obvious that I needed to get to a doctor, so Mom and Dad helped me climb into the back of the station wagon, where I could ride lying down with my arm resting on the cardboard,  while they drove to Payson. 

It was late evening by the time they got to town and found the medical center.  There was a nurse on duty, but the Doctor wasn’t there.  She said he was at a party, and she would call him.  I was taken into an examining room to wait for the doctor to come.  I was scared, my arm hurt, but most of all I was thirsty!

“Can I have a drink, please?”  I asked the nurse.

The nurse wasn’t a very gentle person.  She didn’t even look at me as she got out the instruments the doctor would need.  “No,” was all she said.

I really tried to be patient, but after 10 minutes or so my mouth was so dry I just had to try again. 

The next time the nurse came into the room I asked, “Please, can I have a drink?” 

“You’re not supposed to have anything to drink,” the nurse replied shortly, before walking out of the room.

We waited and waited for the Doctor to come.  I really tried not to cry, but by that time my arm was hurting so bad I could hardly keep the tears in, and my mouth was so dry it hurt.

“Please, mommy,” I begged,  “I’m really, really thirsty.”

Mom held my other hand and looked at Dad for help.  Just then the nurse came back into the room.

“Can’t she just have a little bit of water?" he asked.  “She needs something at least to wet her mouth.”

The nurse turned up her nose and said, “I’ll get her some ice chips, but don’t let her have very much.  She’s not supposed to have anything to drink in here.”

The bowl of ice helped a little, but it didn’t quench my thirst.  I wanted to chew them all up quickly, but the nurse would only let me suck on one piece at a time.

We waited for over an hour, but finally the doctor arrived.  He was cheerful and nice, not like the cross nurse, thankfully.  He looked my arm over.

“It sure is broken,”  he said.  “I’ll have to set it, but it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Now, little girl,” he said, holding up a big shot with a needle almost as long as the syringe, “I’m going to give you this shot so we can put your arm to sleep, then it won’t hurt anymore.”

I had never seen a needle as long as that, and I was scared to death as he started to push it into my arm, all the way down into the bone.  But my arm hurt so badly already that I didn’t even feel the shot.

Soon my arm started to go numb, and before long it stopped hurting.  Then the doctor picked it up and pushed the bones back into place.  Afterwards he wrapped my arm with wet pieces of warm, gooey gauze.  When he was done my arm was totally encased in a thick, white cast. 

“This will dry soon, and be as hard as a rock,” the doctor told me.  “You won’t be able to move your arm, but it shouldn’t hurt, and in four or five weeks it will be healed and as good as new.”

Dad asked the doctor if they should take me home to Mesa, but the doctor assured him that I would be feeling fine in a day or two, and there was nothing for them to worry about.

When they left the medical clinic, Dad asked if I would like to stop at the drive in and get something to eat.  What a treat!  We almost never went to a restaurant.  Dad let me choose anything I wanted, and a strawberry malt sounded best, so that’s what I got.   

I was exhausted from the pain and excitement, and fell asleep on the way back to the cabin.  When I woke up the next morning I found myself lying in the little bed at the end of the trailer in grandma and grandpa’s cabin.  All of my cousins were standing by the bed, looking at my arm.

“Does it hurt?”   Terry asked. 

“Can we write our name on it?” Johnny wanted to know. 

The other cousins all wanted to write their names, too, so Mom found a pen and they each carefully signed the cast. 

It was kind of cool having everyone so interested in me but I was sort of embarrassed, too.

Then my arm started hurting, and it ached all morning.  Mom made me Jell-O, and I sat in the soft chair in grandma’s cabin, my cast resting on a pillow laid carefully over the wide, wooden arm of the chair.  Grandma let me hold the neat pincushion she had made from the stalk of a century plant.  It was round, about 3  inches wide, and 3 inches tall.  It was dark yellow, dry and light, and smelled like dry grass.  It was really interesting to look at, and everyone tried to be really kind to me, but all I felt like doing was cry.

By late afternoon Mom and Dad were worried.  The doctor had said my arm wouldn’t hurt, but I was still in a great deal of pain.  They finally decided to pack up and take me home.

The next day they took me to the doctor in Mesa.  He X-rayed my arm, and found that it had not been set correctly.   The bones were already starting to grow back together, crooked.  A few days later I had to go to the hospital and have my arm re-broken and set again.  Mom and Dad were pretty cross at the doctor in Payson, who was having so much fun at his party that he made them wait for hours, and then set my arm wrong because he was drunk.

All’s well that ends well, though.  I couldn’t go swimming for the rest of the summer, and I missed a scavenger hunt on my birthday because it was raining outside, but I also got to start second grade with a cast on my arm.   After a few months it was taken off and my arm was as good as new, except that I walked with it held at a 90 degree angle for months afterwards because I had grown so used to holding it that way.