It started with a cat.
We’ve been having some pretty nice spring weather lately; on Wednesday afternoon, Timothy decided to go out on the deck after school and enjoy some sunshine. What he didn’t plan on was a cat that knocked the dowel back into the sliding glass door track, effectively locking him outside.
Timothy, being the unprepared soul that he was, had left the key inside and couldn’t get back in. He called me and I advised him that he should enjoy the sun as I didn’t have time to come home and rescue him.
So, he stayed over at the neighbor’s house where Sarah and Ryan play after school (and before I come home). I had a late call with a client for work, and so when I was leaving, I texted Jared telling him I was on my way home.
He replied, “Good. You can take Sarah to the E.R.”
I thought he was joking. But I hurried home, and found Sarah uncomfortably asleep on the rocking chair.
Jared explained that as he was picking up the kids, he heard them playing happily in the backyard. And then he heard Sarah start to cry. Apparently, Sarah and Timothy were playing in one of those little red and yellow cars. Timothy was pushing Sarah, and they turned a corner too tightly and at too great of speed, and Sarah and the car tipped over. Sarah landed on her arm. Jared brought her home, and put an ice pack on her. She had worked herself up pretty good about the injury, so Jared wasn’t surprised to hear she was asleep.
I went to check on her, and she woke up shortly after. I did a quick comparison of her two arms and found that her right arm was considerably larger than her left. Even if it was only a serious sprain, I wanted to get her checked out. She woke up crying and complained and cried every time I moved her arm, which is not a good sign.
We trundled off to the E.R. at around 7 p.m. They were very fast at getting us checked in, and the doctor came in right away and took two seconds to look at her arm before ordering an x-ray. Based on where it was swelling, he was pretty sure there was a break.
Sarah tried to convince me that her arm was feeling better and that she hadn’t broken any bones. I was not convinced.
Turns out the doctor was right. She broke the upper bone in her right arm right above the elbow; it’s called a supracondylar fracture. The danger with this kind of break is that it is right near the elbow and near several nerve clusters. This kind of injury is particularly serious in children because they are still growing and it may cause damage to the growth center of the arm and prevent full extension of the arm if it isn’t treated properly.
Because of this concern, the ER doctor had sent Sarah’s x-rays to an orthopedic surgeon to see if it warranted surgery. Most of our waiting was spent waiting for the surgeon’s response. He confirmed that surgery was needed to place pins in the arm to pin the fractured part of the bone in place. Unfortunately, the doctor who did the initial consulting was leaving town the next morning. So we had to wait some more while a new doctor was lined up. It was important that she have surgery on her arm as soon as possible.
I think they were trying to get something for that night, but it was too late. After we had a surgeon lined up for the morning, they put a splint on Sarah to get her through the night.
In the morning, we called to see where they had put Sarah on the schedule. With a little shuffling (they took into account that she was a child), we had to be at the surgical center at 9:30. With Timothy at school, the four of us trundled off to the center.
I was very pleased with the doctors and nurses at the center. They explained everything to us and made sure all of our questions were answered before the procedure. The Dr. Larsen put 3 pins in Sarah’s arm during the surgery that took about 45 minutes. If you look closely, you’ll see the thin white line right above the elbow joint in the left-side image. That is the break. The pins are put in at different angles (even though it looks like they are all in a line) to immobilize the bone so that it will heal correctly. And then they put on a pink cast (as requested by Sarah) to help her keep it stable. She’ll be in the cast for 4 weeks; after the 4 weeks the pins will come out and the cast will come off.
This is Sarah post-surgery at home on Thursday afternoon. Sarah was particularly hysterical coming out of her general anesthesia, and she very chatty with the nurses. Her shyness filter was very much reduced while she was waking up, and she also talked in circles a lot. We would be talking about one thing, and then she would come back to something we had just talked about a minute earlier. We asked her several times about her pain level, and honestly, the thing she was most annoyed about was the heart rate and O2 monitor on her finger. We finally convinced her to take some Motrin, but that was all she wanted. To date, she’s had some Tylenol and Motrin, but not on a regular schedule and we haven’t even bothered to fill her prescriptions for stronger pain meds. I consider her very blessed that she hasn’t been in extreme pain.
She was doing so well that she wanted to go to school on Friday. I was a little anxious about it, but she did pretty well. She needed a little medicine at around 2 p.m. to get her through the rest of the day, but that was all. She came home from school with signed and decorated cast. (I hadn’t suggested she have her friends sign her cast; someone at school must have.)
She was insistent that her family sign her cast, too. I honestly think this is the first time I’ve signed a cast in my life. Seems pretty appropriate that it was for my daughter. I also signed Grandma Cowles’ name in absentia at Sarah’s request.
So, pretty traumatic couple of days. And it all started when a cat locked my son out of the house. Stupid cat.
Comments
Post a Comment