14 August 2010

At last, and with me becoming very worried after 6 days, Emily produced a poo. The medication prescribed to her is either ineffective or extremely slow in taking effect. Emily and I went up to the canal with Kate in the morning. We fed the many ducks first
then walked along for a while, despite a heavy rain shower passing over. Emily walked from one bridge to the next and most of the way back: a good 800 yards I reckon. We saw quite a few barges and there was plenty of wildlife and many farm animals to point out. It is a really pleasant rural spot with good views across the Cheshire Plain.

After lunch the happy moment came when we were to meet Nick from Macclesfield station. I did not tell Emily that he would be there, merely that we were going to watch trains, so it was a lovely surprise for her. She seemed very emotional, though not quite tearful, as she went to his arms. She had fun showing Nick all her new toys and books and exploring the garden together.

It was all going well until he gave Emily a swing around on the grass. She began crying hysterically and seemed to be in pain. After a while, we got her upstairs and lay her down on the bed and she dropped off, worn out with crying. She slept for ages then woke and again complained of pain in her arm, but then went back to sleep on me for another hour or more. As there was no improvement we decided to take her to casualty. We saw a triage nurse quickly and were then shown into a kids waiting room, which at least had toys, books and DVDs. She had some painkiller but we had to wait two hours, which really dragged. There was another family there who were very pleasant. We watched a lot of DVDs as Emily could not play due to the pain in her wrist. Finally, we saw a doctor and he was very offhand, seeming almost uninterested and with no bedside manner at all. He sent us to Xray, where we hung around some time longer. Emily was very patient, under the circumstances. Nick and I had to wear lead aprons and Emily managed to cope with the two x-ray plates fairly well. We went back to the doctor and he showed the x-ray results to all of us. Emily was really interested to see a picture of her bones. There was apparently no break; it was just a soft tissue injury so there was no treatment he could give other than painkiller. While waiting for Graham to pick us up at 11pm, we saw some fireworks in a nearby park, and Emily saw some stars too. Back at home she had toast then we went off to bed at midnight, all emotionally worn out.