Danielle Cater: Care from hospital eases painful situation

After a long, hard week of work, my husband and I were headed into a “kid free” weekend and ready to just relax. We had no big plans and were ready to take full advantage of that. 

We did our due diligence and hit up my nephew’s birthday party Friday night and put our minds on coast mode for the rest of the weekend.

We got up early Saturday morning, hooked the bass boat up to the truck and started making our way to Lay Lake to put a whoopin’ on some fish. 

We got past Birmingham when we received a phone call informing us that our oldest daughter had an accident on the trampoline and they believed she had broken her leg. 

We immediately turned that rig around and headed toward Children’s Hospital. We got there before our daughter, Natalie, even got there so we were at the curb to help bring her in when the car arrived.

She was visibly shaken and after my husband brought her into the emergency room, she calmed down, and I got the first peek at the leg in question. 

As soon as I looked down her body, there was no question as to which leg was injured. To say it was deformed looking was pretty accurate. Our baby’s poor leg was obviously completely broken, and we fought hard not to react with tears.

When the ER attendant came over to see what was the problem and to ask which leg was broken, she made it half way through her question and said, “Oh, never mind, I think I’ve got everything I need.”

Within minutes they had Natalie on a bed, wheeling her to a room in the ER and getting all of the information they needed to take care of her.

Within the hour she already had her IV in, X-rays had been taken in the room and they were ready to put her under so they could set her leg, and put a cast on her.

I can’t even describe how wonderful the nurses and staff of Children’s Hospital were to our baby girl.

When she wanted to overreact and be drawn in with fear of pain, they calmly talked to her and explained everything they were about to do.

Each person in the ER made a point to keep her and the family completely comfortable and informed throughout the whole process.

There was hardly ever a minute that there wasn’t some type of staff member in the room with us.

When a child gets hurt, these doctors and nurses don’t just have to take care of the child, they have to take care of the parents too.

Some people are completely calm and are the voice of reason for their children when they are in a situation like that, but some are more reactive and have to be calmed down themselves before the staff can even begin to work on the children. These people have seen it all, I’m sure.

All I could do was continue to thank each staff member as they passed out of our room. They were completely kind-hearted toward us and our situation and they took great care of Natalie.

After they set her leg and she came out from under the anesthetics we spent a little more time in the ER and then it was finally time to be moved to a room so they could watch her overnight.

As they wheeled her to the tenth floor of the hospital, there were two staff members cheering us on as we went into the room. They laughed and cut up and had all of our spirits lifted before they left. The television was customized to say Natalie’s name on it and they made sure she was in great shape.

These workers took what could have been an awful situation for our family and made it less stressful. 

I can’t brag enough on Children’s Hospital. Seven years before this weekend, to the date, I was in the same hospital with our youngest daughter hearing that they didn’t expect her to live. At that point I didn’t care about their bedside manner, I just wanted our baby to live. 

They took good care of us back then and they took good care of us this past weekend. 

They were patient and caring and that made a huge impact on our family. 

They could have given us the best care around, but if their attitudes and actions were unbecoming, it would have made those two days torturous to our family. But because of their kindness and excitement for their jobs, they eased the situation, kept Natalie out of pain and had her fixed up and ready to head home within two days. 

We are so grateful for the care we received at Children’s Hospital and we are so thankful that we have the luxury of having such a state of the art emergency care facility so close to our community.

Sometimes our relaxing, kid-free weekends don’t work out the way we plan for them to, but when it’s all said and done, we are thankful for the extra time with our baby girls and thankful that God took good care of them.

Sometimes you have to find the blessings in the little things like good care at hospitals and extra time with your children. We are truly blessed.