What HAS he done now?

Nigel’s brother has spent the last week with us, and we decided to have a family day last Saturday for my birthday.  It was lovely.  Wayne took my parents in his 4WD ute, we had the kids in ours and we took the drive to Lost World Valley (part of Lamington National Park).  We picked wild raspberries, got a bit edgy when a bull came very close to us protecting his ‘Wifey’ and the kids had fun skipping stones in the creek.

From there, we took Duck Creek Road (4WD only) up to O’Reillys (Lamington National Park) for coffee, juice and hot chips before stopping off at one of our favourite lookouts – Kamarun lookout – to take in the gorgeous view before the long drive home.

We had no sooner gotten out of the car when we all heard a loud thud, then a scream, and turned to see Julian lying on the ground half on his side, half on his stomach – very still - near the covered gazebo.  Nigel and I raced over to see what had happened (closely followed by Wayne, Mum and Dad) and ended up with Julian screaming at us “Don’t touch my arm, don’t you dare touch my arm!”

Between the two of us, we managed to convince him to let us roll him over onto his back so Nigel could check his arm while I supported him from behind.  Mum came over with her every present, fully stocked first aid kit and while I cleaned the scrapes on one arm, Nigel was checking over the other one, which Julian was having trouble moving, and all the while we were trying to find out what had happened.  Turns out he had tried to vault a stone pillar using his right hand, which had slipped and he put his left arm out to ‘save’ himself as he fell. 

We had 2 junior Doctors come over (they were having a bit of a break away and had decided to wander up and check out the sunset) who are currently interning at Redcliffe hospital (what are the odds?!) and offered to check Julian over to make sure nothing was broken.  Luckily for Julian, one of them was interning in Orthopedics!!!  There was no break, however they did say to keep an eye on his arm because some injuries wouldn’t really show up until the next day.

And the next morning, this proved to be true.  His elbow had swollen up overnight, his wrist was extremely painful and he had pins and needles in his fingers.  So, off to the hospital we went.  The result?  Julian had fractured the radial head in his elbow and had also severely sprained his wrist.  So, we have an appointment on Monday to see if they’ll keep the cast on or keep it off.  In the meantime, he’s in a lot of pain, but very thankful he hadn’t broken anything.

Boys.

Nigel and I would like to send out a huge thank you to the 2 Junior Doctors from Redcliffe Hospital who helped us out on Saturday afternoon.  You were both very confident, reassuring and comforting.  I may not look forward to meeting you again in the future, but don't take that personally!!!  

Also, a huge thank you to the staff at Robina Hospital Emergency Department.  I don't think I have ever seen a more efficient Emergency Department (and I have seen a LOT).  No doubt I will be seeing you again sometime in the future!

A Day for Jules

 Each school holidays, my parents take one of our kids for a week.  The kids love it!  They get a holiday with Nanny and Poppy, and time to themselves away from their three siblings.

 These holidays though, they ended up taking the younger three instead.  Two were supposed to go to their Grandma and Granddad’s, but unfortunately Grandma ended up extremely ill and in hospital the night before they were going to take them home with them, so my parents offered to take them as well so they wouldn’t miss out on a ‘holiday’.

That’s just what my parents do – they hate to see their grandchildren disappointed and love to help out whenever they can. 

So for the first week of the school holidays, it was just Jules and us.  In my post ‘Stress Relief for Siblings’, I wrote about how Nigel and I took our younger three to Fingal Head for a day while Jules was on his own ‘holiday’ with Nanny and Poppy.  This time around, we decided to take the drive down with Julian.

This isn’t as easy as it sounds – the walk up to the Lighthouse and cliffs one way would be quite tiring for him, so we needed to find an alternative way that was a lot shorter.  We ended up finding another car park that was closer, and made sure he took it easy on the stairs on the way up.

It was a great day.  Fish and chips for lunch, wandering along the beach and climbing unusual trees (well, Julian did anyway) and getting stuck on the way down.  He did end up getting palpitations on the way back to the car at the end of the day, so hopefully these were recorded on the event recorder he was wearing!

 

This time was good for us.  It gave Nigel and I a chance to enjoy his strange sense of humour without having to curb it in front of his younger siblings, and a chance to just sit and talk.