No, not the summer of 2020.

After my son had to have his arm re-broken in the doctor’s office, without anesthesia, because the person who had put on his cast a week prior had set his arm incorrectly, he looked up at the pediatric orthopedist and said, “You know, I’m really lucky. If this hadn’t happened, my arm wouldn’t be even straighter than it was before!”

This was the third time he broke his arm in a two-month period. Or rather, maybe, had his arm broken. The first time, he tripped in the playground at school, an innocent enough accident that instead broke the two bones in his forearm. Two years prior, he had broken the same arm, much worse, in a different spot. That time, we were at a Kentucky Derby party, and I had to sit with him endlessly at the hospital with his arm cracked into a nauseatingly unnatural state next to him while the food he had just eaten digested so he could be put under in order to reset it. This time, it was his sister’s birthday, and the promised family dinner out turned into whatever was left at the hospital cafeteria that was about to close. 

When he got his cast off, he was allowed to swim again, and the first swim meet back, he was up on the blocks for his first race. The starter said, take your marks, and then told the swimmers to relax as someone was too slow or not staying still enough – this was the first meet, after all, and a heat full of 8 and Unders, the youngest and least experienced swimmers. The kids will often then fall or jump into the water, momentum being what it is, and as my son fell (which would have been fine) a coach-in-training, a young girl in her mid-teens, grabbed his arm to keep him from falling in. His newly healed arm.

I was standing right next to him, my designated position as stroke-and-turn judge for the race, when it happened, and I watched it in slow motion, knowing the disaster that was about to unfold, pierced by my son’s shriek of pain at the re-breaking. I then screamed and collapsed into a sobbing heap on deck, knowing what had just happened, knowing it was unnecessary and should have been avoided. I was devastated for my son who loves swimming more than anything except maybe his video games, knowing his summer was now ruined. And I was furious at the girl who grabbed his arm, from good intentions, no doubt, but breaking the rules and breaking his arm as a result. 

I yelled at the head coach. I tried to dial my husband to come and get our son, to take him to Urgent Care, to tell him that his arm had been broken again. I tried to break down our pop-tent and fold our chairs and carry everything to the car. I managed to do it all, but I don’t know how, other than through the help and generosity of other parents on the team, as humiliated as I was at how emotional I had been, but unable to really do anything else except frantically get off of the pool deck and home, to look after my daughter, who was sick, and wait for the inevitable news. 

The next day, he went to get his cast, and he protested the whole time that the person was doing it wrong, since his arm had now been cast and re-cast a number of times, but no one listened, least of all me, in my state of shock and exhaustion. The next day, the story around the pool was that no one had grabbed his arm, that he re-broke it falling into the water, that no one was at fault. No one called me a liar, but to have what I saw with my own eyes openly and brazenly was more than I could bear. One of the parents called me and told me they were called and told that they had seen nothing, even though they saw the same thing I did. These were parents I had to face the rest of my summer since my daughter still wanted to swim, parents I had to face in the winter as I coached their kids on the year-round swim team. 

The next week we went to see his pediatric orthopedist, the specialist who had been treating his arm during the recovery of his previous break. He took one look at the x-ray and my son’s arm, and his face got grave and he prepared my husband for the worst: this was done improperly, and depending on how badly, our son may need surgery and steel rods or screws or plates to make sure it heals properly. I wasn’t at the appointment, instead at work, getting sporadic updates via texts from my husband, trying not to loudly sob at my open-office desk and failing miserably. They were going to try and re-set his arm there. The first time it didn’t work. The second time, after shoving a spacer under his cast, to straighten the bones, it worked, and my son said how lucky he was. 

A week later, at another swim meet, he was there because I had to work and his sister had to swim and he had to come because his father was out of town, he fell into a giant puddle, cast-first, and I made the drive, yet again, into the city the next morning to ensure that his cast wasn’t damaged and that he wouldn’t get swamp foot on his arm. I called my husband in hysterics after it happened, and could barely call the hospital to figure out what I should do. 

His cast finally came off at the very end of the summer, in time to start year-round swim team again, but he wore a brace on his arm for much longer than he needed to, refused for a long time to even get up on a block, because he was so scared of breaking his arm yet again. And I indulged him because I was also scared he would break his arm again, and I knew that I couldn’t handle it happening another time; his arm would heal, but I was convinced that my psyche wouldn’t, not this time. 

My son said he felt lucky, but I didn’t feel lucky at all at the time; I felt cursed, broken myself, unable to carry any more emotional burdens, weighed down by my own depression. The whole academic year had been trying, to say the least – we had been called in to school by his beloved and loving teacher many times, trying to come up with the best ways to deal with our son’s behavior in class, that while wasn’t destructively disruptive, was frustratingly persistent and distracting. After he broke his arm, we thought it would mellow him out, but instead it exacerbated everything, and he had a breakdown one day after school that shook me to my core and forced us to seek help. 

If he hadn’t broken his arm, maybe we wouldn’t have found ourselves so soon in a “talky doctor’s” office, with him expecting to talk about his arms, but instead finding himself being asked to talk about his feelings. If he hadn’t broken his arm, then I wouldn’t haven’t heard the suggestion that he had ADHD when I did. I wouldn’t have read everything I could about ADHD when I did. I couldn’t have realized that I probably had ADHD and that was the underlying cause for my persistent depression and anxiety. I wouldn’t have found the strength to get help for myself so that I could best help my child, my children. 

I didn’t feel lucky at the time, and I don’t know if I would even say now that we were lucky, but him breaking his arm a second and third time meant that we got an answer to the question that had plagued me my entire life: what is wrong with me? A question my son probably rolled around in his own head. We got a diagnosis and we got medication that works and we got an understanding of how our brains worked and we got strategies for dealing with those cognitive differences. 

It was the worst summer as we navigated doctors and referrals and hospital visits and medication adjustments with a broken arm and a broken soul. But we did it, and we are so much better for it. My daughter often tells me that she truly believes everything happens for a reason, and maybe that terrible summer was a gift to be only fully appreciated in 2020 when I can’t even imagine surviving if we hadn’t gotten the diagnoses that we did, when we did.