2nd Trip to the Hospital Avoided

The afternoon of Halloween, Allison's birthday, I took Allison to get her license.  While I was gone Joshua tripped on Ethan's backpack and fell on his arm onto Ethan's birdhouse.  They said he screamed that his arm was broken.  When I got home he whined a bit as he told me, but was no longer screaming.  I checked it out and saw no swelling, bruising or cuts.  He complained off and on that it hurt, but with Halloween and a birthday he was distracted.  He was not using that arm when he could avoid it and would cry if he did use it.  By bedtime he was crying too much.  We were all glad that he went right to sleep.  I hoped that he was simply tired and his arm was fine.  When I checked on him before going to bed he was tossing and turning and starting to whine.  As he woke up he began to cry that his arm hurt.  So he wouldn't wake up anyone, I took him into my room and tried to console him.  He tried to sleep but was awakened by pain.  We were eventually able to get him to take ibuprofen.  He watched a movie and was able to sleep the rest of the night.  He stayed home on Friday so I could watch him.  I was pleased that he could write without pain.  He continued to guard his arm by not using it, but any complaints of pain slowly died out.  He began asking for medicine without complaining of pain so we stopped giving him medicine.  We were glad to avoid a second trip to the hospital for the week and more importantly that Joshua had not broken his arm.