Friday, September 14, 2012

The Cast

Someone once said that every mother of little boys must some day be initiated by her first trip to the ER.  I'm sad to announce that I have been initiated.  About four weeks ago my four-year-old fell from the monkey bars at the playground and broke his humorus near the elbow.  It was a supracondular fracture for all you medical people out there.  We spent two hours in Urgent care before they sent us to the ER at Children's Hospital.  We were there for almost five hours before they splinted the little guy and sent him home. We got lucky.  They originally thought he would need surgery but decided they needed to repeat X-rays as they weren't satisfied with the angle on one of the images.  The swelling was bad so they just splinted the arm and sent us home.
 
He spent the next two days with as much pain medication in him as was allowed and I took him in for his cast two days after the incident.  When the swelling went down I was surprised how loose the top of the cast was.  (I could stick 3 fingers in.)  We took him back one week later for a second layer of casting material and two weeks after to get the cast off.
 The cast didn't slow him down much.  Two weeks after it happened he was climbing up the climbing wall at the playground.  I was a little socked but didn't want to chide him and make him feel broken.
 If you look closly you can see the green casting under the blue.  I liked the blue better.
When the cast came off he didn't want to move his elbow.  The memory of the pain was still fresh in his mind.  He was excited to take a shower, soak in the tub and wear his lego star wars pajamas (they wouldn't fit over the cast).  He's pretty much back to normal now and we even went for a bike ride yesterday.

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