Oh no!

Well we'd hoped the kids would make it through childhood with no broken bones, but no such luck! On Thursday, July 8, I got a call at my desk around 3:30 p.m. saying that Amy'd fallen on her arm and she was very upset. I headed down to her classroom and sure enough she was lying on the couch, white-faced and crying, unable to move her right arm. She had been at the multipurpose indoor play area, and was getting off the tire swing (that's like 8 inches off the ground) when she fell on her arm. She said the mats underneath her separated when she fell, so she may have fallen right on the cement floor.

I took her to the Urgent Care center right away, but I think we didn't get the greatest care there. She wasn't really able to say where her arm hurt, she just pointed at her elbow and refused to move her arm away from her body or straighten it. The x-ray tech wasn't so good at getting her x-ray done, and I'm afraid we caused her a lot of pain in the process. The doctor said the x-rays didn't show anything, she probably just had a deep contusion (bruise); he put a sling on her arm and said give her Tylenol and if it still hurt on Monday (4 days later), take her to an orthopedist. So off we went, thinking all was relatively well. Amy was SO very brave and a trooper to sleep with the sling on.

The next day, she was still in pain. By the early afternoon, we figured that there had to be something more wrong so Tod took her to see the pediatrician, Dr. Ben. Of course he assumed the urgent care docs did a good job of the x-rays, and thought based on the way she was holding her arm that maybe her elbow had popped out of place. Everyone in the place heard her screams as he tried to put it back in place – the poor baby!!! He said he thought maybe he felt it pop, but he wasn't sure...he said if it still hurt her in a couple more hours, to take her to the ER.

Sure enough, she was still in pain so Tod took her to the ER. This time they still had her straighten her arm out for the x-ray, and brave little girl that she is, she did it and they immediately saw she had a spiral fracture of the humerus, the upper arm bone. They gave her a more solid arm wrap and sling, and said to get to the orthopedist first thing the next week.

We had a busy weekend, going to two kids' concerts and generally having a good time – she barely slowed down at all.

I took her to the orthopedist on Tuesday, where they did more x-rays. We'd told her she could pick the color of her cast, but unfortunately the cast guy (I'm sure there's a technical name for that, but I don't know!) had already gotten the hot pink cast material out and started working on it without asking her what color she wanted....she was dressed in pink, so I guess he figured it was a safe bet she'd want pink. She really wanted purple. She handled the disappointment really well, though. The cast covered her whole arm, and it was h-e-a-v-y! The sling hung from her neck and seemed like it'd be pretty uncomfortable. Again, she amazed us with how well she handled the entire thing.

Amy spent nearly 3 weeks with the hard cast and again I just can't say enough about how well she took it – she wrote with her left hand, drew with her left hand, and managed to do pretty much anything she tried to do. The only thing that seemed to bother her was missing out on pool time, and missing the last "sprinkler days" at preschool.

After the initial 3 weeks, she got downgraded to something called a 'sarmiento sleeve' which was basically a sock-like piece of fabric to cover her upper arm and then a plastic velcro thingy that compressed her arm. Two weeks of that, and done!

We were just so incredibly impressed with Amy's resiliency, it was astounding. She goes back to the orthopedist in a month or so for a final once-over, and I think that's it. Hopefully she'll be no worse for wear!