Injured and wants to go to the hospital

[fairejour]

DD (9) was riding her scooter yesterday and took a spill. She scrapped up her elbow and knee and her wrist got hurt. There is no swelling or bruising. She complained all last night that she would not be able to sleep (I wrapped it and she slept fine.) This morning she keeps saying that she "needs to go to the hospital". We have seen her accidentally use that arm, and she is clearly able to move it. 

What do we do? I really don't want to waste a day at the hospital (plus all those people's time and money!) but how do I really know how much it hurts? I genuinely don't believe her because there are no outward signs of injury, but how do I get past her insistence and tears when she says "It hurts too bad to move"/

[tbone_kneegrabber]

Give her some pain meds (ibuprofen is good for swelling) and make an appointment with your primary. Let her take a chill day doing whatever you normally do when sick, let up on screen time, read books together, extra sweet treats etc.  Then see how it is tomorrow. 

[Mittsy]

Do you have a Urgent Care nearby?

[fairejour]

I told her that we would go to the doctor tomorrow, causing her to miss out on a field trip to a cupcake party. She clearly just wants to skip church and watch tv and is interested in what would happen at the hospital...geez!

She had some motrin about an hour ago, but she claims it doesn't help and that it is impossible to move her wrist or do anything with it.

[pigpokey]

I would probably take her to an urgent care that has an x-ray machine. 

[Emmeline II]

We went through this once with each child this year; dd (5) fell on the playground and hurt her hip and ds (7) fell off a stack of chairs and hurt his foot.

I ended up taking them to our urgent care that has an X-ray machine; the X-rays didn't show anything but the doctor said that a particular type of fracture can be difficult to detect in children initially (hidden in the growth plates, I think) but if the pain became worse after a week then it was likely that fracture and it should show up on an X-ray at that point. Neither child became worse so we didn't go back. I think we just alternated hot/cold packs and used pain relief; it was just a longer recovery for a "boo-boo" than they were used to.
 

So, based on my experience I'd keep her as comfortable as you can and wait out the week. You could call your ped and see if she thinks that is a good plan.

[fairejour]

Originally Posted by pigpokey 

I would probably take her to an urgent care that has an x-ray machine. 

Even though there is no swelling and she forgets and moves the hand and doesn't seem to actually be in pain? I would hate to be wrong, and have her actually be hurt and ignore it, but she has no signs of being injured other than her saying her hand hurts.

[One_Girl]

I think waiting until Monday is a good idea. The doctor should have an oncall nurse you can speak to if you feel guilty about waiting, but ours tend to have us wait because most injuries aren't serious enough for an er visit.

[34me]

I would do ice for 20 minutes on, 30 minutes off. Even if it is broken or sprained it's ok to wait. My son played lacrosse for a week with a broken hand. He said it hurt, several times that week but he didn't want to take the time to get an x ray. So there could truly be an issue but it will still be there in the morning.
Now, this year he came out of hockey practice saying he thought he broke his thumb. I said urgent care and he said yes.the doc didn't think it was broken because the doc could move it, but he took an x ray tomake us happy. It was broken in 2 places...

[stik]

I wouldn't go to either urgent care or the ER because of the cost and because this injury does not seem serious. Your regular doc is a good idea. Ice and tlc are my go-tos in these situations.

[Linda on the move]

being able to move a limb  doesn't indicate if it is broken or not.

My DD could still move her arm and hand after her elbow had been shattered. She needed 6 hours of surgery, 2 plates, and 13 screws to put it back together, but she could still move her arm at the elbow joint.

Not being able to move a limb indicates nerve damage, which may or may not happen with a broken bone. (We didn't notice at the time that DD couldn't move 2 of her fingers, and they have never recovered from the nerve damage)

I personally find it difficult to tell when an injury requires real medical care, and when it just needs time, love, and home remedies such as ice.

(there were other obvious signs with my DD, so I'm not arguing that the OPer's child has a serious injury, just making a PSA that the whole "being able to move it" doesn't mean much.)

[Vancouver Mommy]

Originally Posted by fairejour 

Even though there is no swelling and she forgets and moves the hand and doesn't seem to actually be in pain? I would hate to be wrong, and have her actually be hurt and ignore it, but she has no signs of being injured other than her saying her hand hurts.

I think it depends on your kid. If my child were to say she wanted to go voluntarily to the hospital, I would know she was probably really suffering. That said, my son sat in the hospital emergency waiting room playing Fruit Ninja on dh's phone for an hour just before the doc came back with the radiology report and sent him off for a cast.

[fairejour]

Well, this morning she woke up and said that it was still awful...I sent her o school and told her that it still hurt when she got home, we would go to the doctor. She got home and it is just fine! She got distracted and it stopped hurting :)

[LuckyMommaToo]

I'm glad your instincts were right. My son fell off a bouncy waterslide at a birthday party (on a Saturday). I could tell his arm was hurt -- he wanted to leave right away. I dragged him to urgent care that afternoon, we waited four hours, they told us there was NO WAY it was broken. Two days later (monday afternoon) I took him to the ped, b/c he wasn't eating or using that arm. They sent us to a ped orthopedist. She said that it's very difficult for non-specialists to read x-rays for kids. So I won't waste my time with urgent care any more for that kind of injury. Hope this is the end of it for you guys.

-e