Pain as a Reason for Extreme Crankiness?

Yesterday when I picked T up at daycare, he was limping. He said he had fallen on his field trip to the lake and he seemed mostly concerned about some seemingly invisible scratches on his knee. And oh, as an aside, his ankle hurt. He had told no child care workers about the accident -- shocker -- and they didn't notice until I was commenting on it. So my presumption was that the limping started when I showed up.

He has limped for effect in the past, so I pretty much ignored it, thinking once he forgot about it, it would go away. There's a history.

When he was still limping when Hubs got home, I decided it was maybe more serious than I had initially thought. I pulled off both shoes and socks and compared ankles. And headed straight for the ice. Note to others: the most effective method of icing an ankle, it turns out, is a bucket of ice water. Twenty minutes on, two hours off. Repeat. Live and learn. I used a soft ice pack, 10 minutes on, 10 minutes off. Better than nothing, but not as effective as an ice bath.

After icing provided no relief, I called the doctor's office. Because of his extreme limited mobility, they recommended a trip to the Children's Hospital after-hours care center. He has been diagnosed with a sprained ankle and the doctor even commented on how much pain it was causing T. And a sprained ankle is not a "at least it's not broken" situation. A sprain can be more painful and more difficult to recover from than a break. And we don't know for sure yet that it's not broken -- it can be hard to see a break on an x-ray when there is so much swelling.

I would say that having to walk through a grocery store on an extremely painful sprained ankle might cause one to be overly cranky. Although this is where the "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" story comes in. If he didn't crab every.single.time we have to go into a store, I might have had a "Huh, I wonder what's wrong?" moment, instead of thinking, "Here we go again." And if he had said his ankle hurt too much to walk through the store, rather than just muttering the usual complaints, I might have had a "Huh, maybe there's more to this ankle thing that I thought" thought. And opted to send Hubs out for the toilet paper.

So today's track camp track meet is out and I'm not sure which one of us is more disappointed. He was going to run the hurdles. And I'm hoping this doesn't impact his future running career. When you're at track camp, where everyone is fast, and one of the other parents points at your kid and says, "He's fast," you feel like this kid has a future in running. A local high school standout to be? A college scholarship? Maybe the Olympics? And the next day he sprains his ankle slipping sideways on some skree while walking on a hill. Ugh.

Click here to see him practicing hurdles.  He's a natural. This was only his second day ever running hurdles.

Now he's home from daycare yet again. And we'll be icing -- in a bucket of ice water, 20 minutes, two hours off -- and taking ibuprofen. And hoping youth is on his side and he will make a full recovery. I'm kicking myself for being like an orphanage worker and ignoring his complaints. How much did that trigger? Yes, there is a history, but I should take him seriously until proven otherwise.

Blech. I've had better parenting days than yesterday. Seems I need to work on my own triggers.