Nursemaid Elbow?

It is true that I learn something every day. However, I'd rather not learn about anything in the children's hospital ER. This evening we were walking home from a lovely dinner with friends. We were having a great time. Penelope was holding each of our hands. Ever time she counted to ten we'd swing her up in the air. Sometimes she did it completely in english, sometimes in spanish and sometimes...

"uno, dos, tres, four, five, six, siete, ocho, nueve, ten!" Laughter and swing in the air!

We were one house away from ours when she started to head to the street. Chris grabbed her arm to stop her. She turned and went limp legged as he pulled up and did a gut wrenching scream. I saw it out of the corner of my eye and said "see, you are too rough. You never listen to me." Then we realized she was really hurt, I saw Chris's face and felt horrible for scolding him. She tried to straighten her arm and screamed again. I'm happy to say I didn't freeze, but called our pediatrician, got instructions to head to the Children's Hospital, checked I had her insurance card and we were out the door.

The Children's ER was amazing. It was obviously a very quiet night as there were 3 nurses standing at the front desk. We were barely in the door when one nurse took us to a desk to check Penelope's vitals. I thought Chris was about to lose it. The nurse saw this too and said "Don't worry. It's just a nursemaid. We aren't calling social services on you." I guess we should have known the term nursemaid? Turns out that some kids bones will easily separate at the elbow and a ligament will sneak in and get stuck. The doctor quickly twists it and it snaps back. We got in within 10 minutes and the doc had no problem fixing her right up. She asked Penelope to run to the door and open the handle. Not a problem. It was like she hadn't had screaming horrible pain a few minutes before. Those nursemaids must have pulled kids around quite a bit to get a type of dislocation names after them!

So we were warned that if a kid has one nursemaid they are prone to more. No more 1-10 Swing! I'm so glad it was such an easy fix. On the way there I was imagining our upcoming beach vacation with a 2 year old in a cast. Thank goodness that didn't happen!