Benjamin's Tough Break

Our son Benjamin broke both bones in his left forearm Wednesday evening.

He and Glenda were over at my house having dinner, and Benjamin had gone back and forth from my room a couple of times to get Puffs Plus for his stuffy nose. The last time, he started running back to the kitchen, tripped on an ethernet cord I had running across the doorway on the floor and fell into the hallway wall. The force of the fall completely snapped both bones with such strength that his forearm became bent out of alignment and was noticeably misshapen. We heard the thump of him falling and he immediately started crying and yelled, "my arm!" As soon as he said that I knew something was wrong. I got to him, saw and felt it, and immediately told Glenda and Dad, "his arm is broken." That was at about 5:50 p.m.

At first we took him to the urgent care clinic at his doctor's office where we waited for quite a while. Once the doctors (finally) saw him, they realized how badly the arm was broken and did their best to splint it before having us go down to Children's Mercy hospital. They even took some pictures to show to medical students. The clinic staff were also able to give Benjamin some pain killers and called ahead for us to put the pediatric orthopedist on notice that we were coming to Mercy. On the way to the hospital Benjamin fell asleep in the car.

Amazingly enough, things went pretty smoothly at Children's Mercy. When Benjamin woke up he was in much better spirits. The pain had apparently subsided to the point that he wanted to go over to the little table in the waiting room to color with the other kids. We told him that wasn't the best idea. At one point the orthopedist came out and confirmed with us that the arm was misshapen, and he said that he was going to get things hurried along.

Once we got into the triage room -- where they do the initial vitals and check the seriousness of an injury -- we were quickly moved through to get Benjamin taken care of. The triage nurse said that the E.R. staff wanted to see him "right now." We got taken for X-rays and then to room "Ortho 2" where we spent the rest of the night.

They got him an I.V. line, told us what they were going to do and then proceeded to fix his arm. Because of the nature of his break, they had to essentially knock him out to put it back into place. The stuff they gave him made his eyes glaze over and he fell into his own little dream world. They had us leave when they were doing the actual work and we took the time then to update family on what was taking place. About 30 minutes later he was done getting fixed and we went back in to see him. While the meds were wearing off he had double vision for a bit. We had to stay in the room for quite a while during his recovery period.

We ended up leaving the hospital shortly after 11:30 p.m. After a brief run to a 24-hour pharmacy for his pain meds and picking up Glenda's car, we took our baby home.

He's with his grandma and grandpa today. Glenda and I both needed to go to work today, so it's been a bit tough. He'll be fine though. In six weeks he should get the cast off and be pretty much back to his normal self.

Benjamin is quite the trooper. I figured seeing his arm misshapen like it was would have made him completely FLIP OUT, but he did really well the whole time. Sure, it hurt. Sure, he cried. But all in all he was awesome. I love my son. :-)

I'm kind of kicking myself for not taping that cable down in the first place. There's a lot of "what ifs" in this situation, but Glenda reminds me that it could have happened at her apartment with one of his toys on the floor. I'm honestly not being too hard on myself, but I look at that (now taped-down) cable across the floor and know that my son is in a full arm cast for six weeks because of that. It stings just a bit, you know?

But hey, that's life. We are just grateful that he only hurt his arm and didn't hit is head or break his neck. We're grateful that we have a support system of family and friends to uplift us and pray for a speedy recovery. I'm personally thankful that I have Glenda and Benjamin in my life, even if it means that he ended up tripping over a cord at my house and breaking his arm. He has a dad now and I have a son, and that's pretty cool...plaster cast and all.

Smiles. Oh, and be careful, okay?

Spring is Springing!

The snow is melting, the temperatures are rising, and the birds are beginning to chirp outside again. Winter is FINALLY leaving after an annoyingly cold, snowy and icy season. Woohoo!

Farewell, Dear Friend.

I'd like to take a moment to mourn the loss of a dear friend: My Powerbook's internal hard drive. After a long bout of grinding and slowing access speeds, it crashed yesterday.

Don't worry, I made arrangements to have all of its files backed up shortly before its passing and should be able to recover darn near everything that was on there before.

Sometime I will have it replaced, but for now I'll just have to stick to the Power Mac G5 on which I'm typing this. You know, wedding stuff and everything is more important to pay for right now.

In lieu of flowers, the Powerbook requests you make a donation to the "Powerbook Hard Drive Memorial Fund," care of myself, which will go toward final expenses and a swank new drive in the future.

I promised myself I wouldn't cry!

Love Is In The Air Everywhere I Look Around.

This Valentine's Day is far different than any I've experienced in the past: I'm engaged to be married! Love has found me for life in the form of a wonderful woman named Glenda. I just want to reiterate how blessed I am to have someone who is very different from me but complements me so well. I feel honored that I get to be her companion and thoroughly enjoy making her feel like a queen. It is truly in giving love that we receive.

Even if Valentine's Day has become yet another overly commercialized holiday, I like being able to officially take a day out of the year to celebrate our love for each other.

Glenda and I also have an annoucement to make. Read about it at our wedding blog, "For As Long As We Both Shall Live".

Happy Valentine's Day!

To Be, or Not To Be...on DVD? Ah, To Be!

For those of you who have seen or are interested in Kenneth Branagh's 1996 release of Shakespeare's Hamlet, I have some good news:

Thusfar, this film has been available on VHS but NOT DVD. That is supposed to change this calendar year. Apparently it was a big and expensive task to transfer the four hours of 70mm original film to the digital domain, but that part of the process is complete. Now it's down to producing the special features and so on that will accompany the DVD release.

Read more of "Mark Cassello's Successful Quest to Get Shakespeare's Hamlet Starring Kenneth Branagh Released on DVD."

So...

I haven't been blogging lately partly because I've been so busy, but also because there hasn't been much to blog about.

I got through the busyness and stress of youth rally and now am staying fairly busy at work.

Glenda, Benjamin and I are doing well enough. It's been tough being a "family" without me living there. It's like a reverse divorce: We're getting the separation part of our relationship out of the way now instead of later.

And that's all I have to say about that.