Like many 9-year-olds, Orange Park’s Cameron Balczon is full of energy, fearless and loves all kinds of sports. He plays and watches basketball and soccer, has played baseball, and enjoys swimming, too.
With a boy as active as Cameron, Mom Deborah knows bumps, bruises and scrapes come with the territory. However, at the beginning of Memorial Day weekend in 2010, she got the scariest call of her life.
Deborah remembered, “I was on my way home from work, just a block away from his day care center, when my phone rang. The day care employee said that Cameron had injured his right arm on playground equipment and that I should come right away.”
When Deborah arrived, she could see instantly that Cameron was badly hurt. “I took the ice pack off of his forearm and saw a large area that appeared to be ‘collapsed.’”
“I scooped him up, ran to my car and, as gently as I could, put him in his child passenger seat,” said Deborah. “He was crying and screaming in pain. I knew I needed to get him to the Wolfson Children’s Hospital ER.”
By the time she arrived, Cameron was shaking uncontrollably. When Deborah carried him inside, the Registration staff member immediately called the triage nurse out to the waiting room.
Deborah remembered every detail of what happened next. “The nurse said, ‘I think he’s going into shock and we need to stabilize his arm.’ Once she did that, he was much calmer. The nurse took us right to a room in the ER. She turned on cartoons for him as distraction and told him to stay as still as possible.”
The nurse gave him medication by mouth for his pain and, minutes later, the pediatric emergency medicine physician arrived in the room. “The doctor was so nice and calming,” said Deborah. “He told Cameron he had to take pictures of his arm and they brought in a portable X-ray machine. I held Cameron’s left hand the whole time.”
After X-rays were read by a Nemours Children’s Clinic, Jacksonville, pediatric radiologist, results came back quickly to the pediatric ER doctor, who told Deborah that Cameron had suffered a serious break and that they needed to call in a pediatric orthopedic surgeon with Nemours to Wolfson Children’s Hospital to re-align the bone before casting. Distracting the preschooler by asking him what his favorite color was, the pediatric anesthesiologist, also with Nemours, put Cameron under anesthesia so he could withstand the bone re-alignment procedure.
Deborah and her sister Carrie went to the waiting room while the procedure was being done. “”It wasn’t very long before it was done, and the doctor came in to show me the before and after X-rays,” said Deborah. “ He said that because Cameron was a growing boy, aligning the bone before casting was crucial, not just that day, but as he got older and returned to sports. I was so relieved!”
While Cameron’s arm healed, he saw the same pediatric orthopedic surgeon he had at the Wolfson Children’s Emergency Center, but in his outpatient office at the Clay County location of Nemours Children’s Clinic (now in Fleming Island at the Baptist Clay Medical Campus). After five weeks, they removed the little boy’ s cast at Nemours Children’s Clinic, Jacksonville, and he wore a brace for a couple of weeks.
Now nearly 10, Cameron is playing all the sports he loves, including basketball in the fall and winter, and soccer in the spring and summer.
Since 2010, Deborah has only been to the Wolfson Children’s Emergency Center once, when Cameron hurt his left wrist at a summer camp bouncy house. Fortunately, Cameron’s wrist was not broken, but Deborah knows where to take him if her son ever needs medical care.
“I trust Wolfson Children’s Hospital” said Deborah, “That started when Cameron was born at Baptist Medical Center Jacksonville after a high-risk pregnancy. They took such beautiful care of Cameron and me. Even his pediatrician, Dr. [Dan] Spearman with Orange Park Pediatrics, is part of Wolfson and Baptist Health. Dr. Spearman and Dr. [Charles] Dellinger took care of me, my four sisters and my brother when we were kids, and now it’s come full circle and they take care of my son and my family’s children.”
Deborah added, “I wouldn’t take my child anywhere else but Wolfson Children’s Hospital!”
