On this day, he came in with Leah SCREAMING in his arms. Now, for us this isn't too abnormal for Leah. She cries/whines all the time. But she never cries at daycare. Never. Like, Ever! So when she came into my room in hysterics, I was a little concerned. Ryan said that she had fallen out on the playground and wouldn't stand. Right, I thought. She just won't stand for Ry. So I took her from her and she screamed even louder. That's not normal for her, as she will usually come to me instead of Ry when she's hurt. I took her and put her on the ground and sure enough she started to freak out and lifted her left leg off the ground. I thought a trip to her classroom was in order.
I asked the girls what had happened, and as usual with these things, nobody really saw what happened. The story I got was that a little boy had pushed her and she had fallen off on the steps. OK, nothing too major. I took her shoe and sock off to see if there was any swelling and I saw a bit, but not really anything too crazy. I went to put the sock back on and she let out a cry that broke my heart. Quick! To the Doctor!
Called the Dr, and of course it was a Friday night and our doctor's office was closed so we had to drive downtown about 25 minutes away to urgent care. And our urgent care is crazy and we had to have an appointment. I wasn't going to wait 3 hours, so we took her in and ended up sitting in the waiting room for only about an hour. The doctor looked at her leg and said that since Leah wasn't flinching when she would touch it she didn't think it was broken or that it would need x-rays. After mulling it over for about 5 minutes, the doctor decided she'd rather be safe than sorry and they decided to get her an x-ray.
Have you even done an x-ray on a 2 year old? With a potentially broken leg? Let me tell you something-it's not fun. At all. Or any word describing fun. It was absolutely horrible. Leah screamed so badly that I started to cry. I'm sure it hurt her, and I'm sure she was scared. It broke my heart to see my baby in such pain and to know that there was nothing I could do. After the first x-ray the lady said "Oh yeah, it's broken" and my heart sank.
The official diagnosis was "a spiral fracture of the left tibia". Because I'm a DR and know exactly what that means. It's a fracture that occurs when torque is applied along the axis of the bone. Thanks Wikipedia! In basic English, it's when the bone is fractured horizontally rather that vertically. So now our story of her falling less than 1 foot didn't really make sense, since there had to some torque somewhere.
While sitting back in the Dr's office waiting for them to decide what to do, Ryan and I talked about how upset we were. Not upset at the little boy who pushed her-kids will be kids-but just upset that she in so much pain.
The Dr decided to send us to the UW ER and she gave us some meds for Leah to take on our way. We sat at the pharmacy for like 30 minutes waiting for a dropper of 1 tablespoon of oxycodone, which made Ryan fume. How in the world did it take this long for something so small?
The road to the ER was fun. I called my boss-since the injury happened on her business. She was supportive and asked to be informed of what happened. Leah, by this point, was cried out and was trying to find things to do. She still had her sock off as she wouldn't let anybody touch that darn leg.
The ER. Boy, what an experience that was. I've never really been to an ER, but I've seen them on TV. That sounds bad, but I've been pretty lucky to be mostly healthy in my life, or maybe I just get sick/injured at the right times when my doctors can actually get me in. Anyway, you know how the ER's look in the movies-lot's of people there running around, loud sounds, and lot's of sickly looking people? Yeah, that's what the ER was really like. I guess it was a popular night in the ER as people kept coming in. We sat in the waiting room for about an hour until we got called into a room. They said that they were going to prep her for surgery "just in case". Surgery. Awesome. Something I hadn't thought of.
And then, we sat there. And we sat there. For a long time. We had a few nurses/Dr's come in to talk to us and it was all the same-"what happened?" "This happened where?" "Are you sure that's what happened?" In the ER, and especially with spiral fractures-there's that "torque" again, they need to make sure that something really did happen to the child rather than the parents doing it and abusing the child. I understand that's their job to do, but they question you like crazy and almost make you feel like it's your fault for not only the accident but for also not really knowing what happened. It was one of the worst things ever-on top of by baby's broken leg. Fracture-sorry. Darn torque!
Eventually-around 10:00pm or so, they said that they wouldn't be needing to do surgery and that they would just cast it. Great! They said they'd be back soon! Well, soon doesn't exist in the ER. It was also a popular night for car accidents and for heart attacks as we kept hearing an announcement over the PA-"Ambulance arrival in room 27" "Ambulance arrival in room......." And the little girl with the fractured tibia in room 32 got pushed to the end of the line. Can't argue there. Leah was hungry, tired and so bored by the time they came in to give her some medicine to sedate her so that it would be easier to cast her. After the meds Leah was hilarious. She kept asking if she could eat the walls and why people didn't eat chairs. Glad she found her humor again:)
Casting her didn't take too long and we were on our way home by 1AM with a cast that went up over her knee about 6 inches. She has a little leg. That cast was huge. 2 hours at urgent care and 6 in the ER. Fun!
Dad and Jenn were at our house waiting for us since Dad came up to the game that I was supposed to coach 7 hours earlier. They also did come down to the ER to get the house keys as Allie hadn't been let out since that morning. Unfortunately, Allie was also having a rough time. She had gone to the vet 2 days earlier and had a tooth pulled so she was having such bad diarrhea that we dreaded going home because she was doing nothing but pooping in the house. And it was so bad. So Dad and Jenn had to clean up her poop that was all over the floor too. Thank goodness they were there to help us!
That night Leah slept in our room. We brought her little bed in and snuggled up. She slept well-she must've been so exhausted! And in the morning I went out to buy some bigger pants to fit over the huge cast and some leg warmers in case our little fashionista decided to go that route. Grandma and Grandpa Siebert also came up that day to spend some time with Leah. They were great to have around to help.
Help. Something Ryan and I don't ask for much. After all, we can do it ourselves, at least we are both stubborn enough to think we can. Help is something we've needed a lot of with this cast. In the beginning I had so many questions/fears of the logistics of the cast.
What will she wear? Her pants are too small and the cast is too big.
How will she get around? A wheelchair would never work at school. (Also her teachers would have probably hated us for getting our crazy child a wheelchair:)
Will she be in pain?
Will she ever sleep? In her room? Ours?
How will she go to the bathroom with that cast so high up?
How will I get her school bag, my purse, my lunch and my daughter down the stairs to the car in the morning to go to work and how will we get into school with all those things?
Ugh. I cringe just thinking about that list. At the time, I really had no idea how all of these things would happen for us. But things were a lot easier than I thought.
I bought her some huge pants-we're talking since 6 from the girl section at Target. There. 1 problem solved. Though they did kind of fall off her tush, they worked much better than leg warmers!
Getting around was a little tougher. The first day of work I had to have a co-worker help me in. I just hadn't really thought too far ahead and I was so exhausted from the weekend. After that first day we started to use her little umbrella stroller. We would use it to take her form the car to school and then they would use it at school, and then we would take her back out to the car using it. Simple enough, and so lucky we still had that thing around when she hadn't been in a stroller for 18 months.
She did sleep! In our room for the first week, then Ryan and I decided we needed to get back into a routine. She slept like a true champ in her bed and we almost never had a problem with it.
Bathroom. HA! We came up with her just hanging on to us around the neck while we pulled her pants down, she would go, then we'd wipe her and have her grab around our necks again to pull the pants back on. Not the best way I'm sure, but it worked!
I never really get a good routine down for getting all those things down to the car, I just grabbed as much as I could and ran :)
At school that next day I finally got the real story of what happened. Leah was pushed off a small step by a little boy. But then as she was trying to get up to run away he jumped on top her while her foot was turning to walk away. There you are torque:)
She went back to the Dr 5 days after the fracture and they put a blue fiberglass cover over the cast, and then again on the 14th of December. They took the old cast off and they put a smaller and lighter blue cast on her. Her pants fit much better after that new cast and she is so much lighter! She also started to walk on the smaller cast so that was nice.
Leah missed out on playing in the snow for the whole month of December. We had a huge snowfall and she sat and sadly watching all the snow fall. That made me sad that she was finally old to really play in the snow and she can't. Ryan doesn't want her to ruin that cast so she just doesn't get out. One day at school the girls decided to get her out there. They wrapped her foot in about a thousand plastic bags and borrowed snow pants from a friend and she got to play. I cried when I saw that. They really helped my girl get to do something that I never thought she'd be able to do with that cast.
For Christmas, Leah wanted nothing more than a water table. A water table is just a little table that kids can play in with water and there are little cups that go in it and she can dump water. So simple. But she wanted one so bad. Well, with that cast that she couldn't get wet, it just didn't seem like a good idea. But she was very persistent, and even asked Santa for that to be her gift. How could Santa say no to a 2 year old with a cast? He didn't. Leah got the water table, but we told her she couldn't play in it until the cast came off. Poor girl. But she was OK with it.
Originally for her 3rd birthday we had planned to go to the Dells and stay at an indoor water park. Obviously that couldn't happen with the cast. So we just stayed at home and had a family birthday. We do plan to go to the Dells sometime in March when this is completely over for her birthday, just a few months late.
The cast came off on January 7, 2013. They took the blue cast off X-rays showed that the fracture was still there. Not as bad as it had been, but not healed either. She cried so much when they took the cast off. I'm sure her knee and ankle hurt from not being use properly from 6 weeks. But she did. She cried just as bad as she had for that first x-ray. Every memory of that first night came back when I saw the pain in her eyes. I just wanted it to end. They took her blue cast and put Velcro on it so that she could rest her foot in that until she was ready to go in a boot. The walking boot was our dream as she could then take a bath again, play in the water table, itch her leg. All the things we had been waiting weeks to do. She stayed in the blue cast for about 5 seconds and then she decided the walking boot would be way more fun.
She is currently still in the walking boot, but getting more and more ambitious every day. We take the cast off for short periods during the day and at night she doesn't wear it either. We should have an update in a few weeks as to if we are officially done with this crazy nightmare, which turned out to be not too bad of an experience. Except for the pain. Because that really sucked:)
Amy
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