Our super-fun trip to the ER.

My mom watched EJ and Five while we were up north for The Hub's grandma's funeral. Everything went fine until a few hours before we got home.

Apparently my brother, The Genius, stopped over with his two boys, and had all the kids in the backyard playing. He was holding the kids by the wrists and swinging them around, which everyone loved, except...

Five has unbelievably loose joints. She always has. Her elbows pop out of socket at the slightest touch. I mean, if she is sitting on the floor and you try to help her up, oops! there goes an elbow. The doctor showed me how to put her elbows back in place because we were just getting sick and tired of trips to Urgent Care. Everyone in my family, including my brother, The Genius, knows about Five's joints. We do everything we can to avoid the trauma of dislocation - it's unbearably painful until we can get it back in line - and Five knows to say no to certain types of rough housing. Because of our caution, she hasn't had a dislocation in nearly two years.

She told her uncle she did not want to spin around, but he insisted. And what do you think happened?

That's right. Her elbow came undone.

Five's elbow was so badly dislocated that it was putting pressure on the nerves and blood vessels in her arm. Her hand was swelling and tingling and turning blue, and she was in excruciating pain, yet no one saw fit to take her to the hospital. My mom called and asked some bullshit questions about my dad's truck (huh?) and then mentioned at the end that Five hurt her arm. No details about how it happened or anything, just that her arm was hurting. I guess because she was so nonchalant, I didn't think it was a big deal and figured she had fallen or whatever. You know how kids are.

So we got home around 9pm, and my mom brought the kids home shortly after, and Five's arm and hand were so hideously disfigured that I almost threw up. I asked what happened and my mom acted like my brother spinning her around was no big deal. I tried to put the elbow back in place but it wouldn't go, so I applied some ice to reduce the swelling and tried again. No luck.

So off to the hospital we went. We waited about an hour and got into the room about 11pm - because we had to go to the hospital where all the idiots go when they have something as stupid as a cold - and the doctor came in and was shocked at what he saw. The arm just dangled from the elbow down, and there was a huge swelling at the wrist, and her fingers were at least double their normal size. Everything from the wrist down was a weird mottled purple color, kind of like when you come in from the cold and the circulation starts up again.

They did an X-Ray because they thought the wrist was broken as well. It wasn't, thankfully, just sprained with heavy bruising, and they were able to bring the swelling down enough to reduce the joint back to normal. The doctor told me Five was very lucky that we brought her in when we did, because she could have suffered permanent damage to her hand, with the way the bones were compressing the nerves and blood vessels.

We were discharged, and got home around 2am.

I'm still mad about this, even though it's been a few days. I am mad at my brother for doing this to Five despite her expressly stating she did not wish to be spun. I am mad at my mom, for not letting me know what happened, and for not bringing Five in to be examined. I'm mad at myself, for not knowing better than to leave her with them.

Five, on the other hand, thinks the whole thing was a grand adventure and keeps asking when she can go back to the hospital.