Thursday at lunch, Sarah walked in the door, sobbing so hard she couldn’t talk. Noah had to translate and tell me what had happened. Apparently, Sarah had been running down the hill from school to the bus, because she was worried she would be late and miss it. She hit an ice patch and fell backward onto to the pavement. Somehow, she managed to twist herself in mid-fall, and landed on her side, rather than flat on her back. Also, she got her arm in between her head and the ground. Thank goodness! I don’t even want to imagine the nastiness that could have occurred if she had hit the back of her head full on the ground like that.
There were 3 fifth grade girls right there, who saw the whole thing. They immediately helped her up, and walked with her the rest of the way to the bus. One even carried her schoolbag for her, and handed it to Sophie when they got to the bus. So nice. I am so thankful they were there to help her. We have such nice kids in our town. By the time she came home, she was still crying. That isn’t normal for Sarah. 
She has the same high pain threshold that I do, so I knew something was seriously wrong. As luck would have it, Thursdays are the day Chris works from home. So he was there to take over, and make sure the other kids got lunch, and I could just grab Sarah and go straight to the hospital. Well, we tried to call our regular pediatrician first, but the office is closed on Thursdays.
We didn’t have to wait more than a couple minutes, and then the nurse took us back to the exam room. Sarah commented on how nice she was. I told her that I had never seen a nurse that wasn’t nice at this hospital. Then the doctor came, and she was just as nice. That helped to calm Sarah down a lot. They took x-rays, and it was clear to them, at least, that Sarah had a clean break in her arm. My poor baby. They wrapped it up in a hot pink cast, which she loved, and then cut a slit in it the entire length of the cast. Then they wrapped the whole thing in a purple ace bandage. 
They said they did it this way because of the swelling that always occurs the first few days after this type of injury. Then a week later she got a solid, hard cast.
Once the pain meds kicked in, she was able to enjoy all the extra attention, and revel in the fact that she didn’t have to do any chores for a few days. 
She also got out of practicing the violin for almost a whole month. Woohoo! The only downside was that she broke her left arm. So writing, eating and getting dressed were pretty tricky. She managed to learn to do everything with her right hand, except get dressed. I still helped her with that every day. And she loved having all her classmates sign her cast. Even I signed it.