3 Oct 2011 - Poor Javier had bone misalignment

This evening while I was having a conference call in office, I got a call from my mom. She said Javier had fallen and seemed to have injured his hand. I was very worried because she said Javier kept crying and his hand was "untouchable". Once they touched his left hand, he will cry even louder. It sounded to me like it's either fracture or dislocation.

I left it to my colleagues to handle the conference call while I rushed back to see what happened. When I reached my parent's place, my dad was carrying him. I had to slowly and carefully carried him over because we cannot move his left hand or he will scream. I quickly drove him to KK hospital after picking up Tracy, who also rushed back from her office, from the MRT station.

The children's emergency department is packed with people. After the initial assessment, the nurse had arranged for Javier to take X-rays of his left hand. I accompanied Javier into the X-ray room and I can sense that he's a bit scared. I had to hold his hand carefully in different position for X-ray to be taken properly. After the X-ray, we were told that we had to wait for minimum 2hrs to see the doctor. This was expected after seeing the crowd. As I had not eaten my dinner, we went to the food court and waited there. Javier cried every now and then but one thing helped a lot, that's my iPhone. Though he cannot really move his left hand, he used it to support my phone while using his right hand to play. He knew how to position his left hand so that he will not feel the pain.

Finally, it's our turn to see the doctor. The doctor said the X-ray did not show any sign of fracture or dislocation. So he suspected it's probably due to a bone misalignment due to the fall and such incident is very common among kids between 1-5 years old. As he explained, he held Javier's left hand and slowly twisted it at an angle. Of course Javier started to cry. As the doctor did it, he assured us that it will be fine after 3 seconds. True enough, 3 seconds later, he let go of Javier's hand and gave Javier a sweet container, and guess what, Javier used his left hand to pick up a sweet. AMAZING! The doctor claimed that he heard a slight click sound which meant the bone had aligned back but I could not hear anything. As we left, Javier automatically used his left hand to hold my hand. Though we have waited for almost 3 hours just for a 3 seconds procedure, I'm just glad that he's ok now.