A Mother's Instinct

Next morning, Brian was already gone to work when Isaac woke up and I took off his ace bandage to assess and put more ice on it.  He said he was in a lot of pain still and it took him a long time to go to sleep.  Poor guy!

It definitely was still swollen and just not looking right.  If I even touched it gently he wince in pain.  I made him breakfast and had him ice it during breakfast.  I gave him more pain medication.  I called the doctor and they said for a possible break I needed to go straight to the ER.  I quickly got the boys ready for kindergarten, so that I could drop them off on the way.  Hannah and Genevieve agreed to babysit Bobby, and we were off.  We arrived around 9:30am.  They sent us straight to x-ray after doing vitals and checking swelling.  I got a few compliments on my makeshift brace.  Pretty soon, the doctor was walking in saying that he broke his arm.  That took a minute to set in, because I guess I was expecting that Brian would be right again.  However, mother's instinct wins this time.

They showed us the radiograph and, Wow! radius broken all the way through.  I was thinking a hairline fracture at most.  I was not prepared for them telling us we needed to wait on the hand surgeon to look at the films because he was right on the border of needing surgery.  They ended up deciding to do a local block while they set the bone (called a reduction.)  The shot they gave him right in the wrist was the hardest part for him.  She had to leave it in there and push out so much anesthesia.  Isaac was squeezing his eyes shut and crying a bit, but he didn't move or scream and I was very proud of how tough he was. 

The doctor asked if I had any games on my phone he could play.  I really didn't have a single game on the phone.  I downloaded something that looked like Tetrus for him to be distracted by during the rest of the procedure.  She had to manually bend his arm while taking a series of x-rays right there.  Then they finished the cast.  I had already had him choose a color for his cast to distract him from worrying about this whole reduction procedure.  He wanted dark blue, but the nurse doing the casting offered to do glow in the dark stripes with the dark blue and he jumped at that chance.

I'm not sure why it's so bent, but that's the way it's going to be for a while unless there's a problem when we go back next week for quick x-rays to make sure the bones didn't move. 

We finally were finished with everything at 2pm.  We were starving because they didn't want him to eat before the procedure in case they still had to go the anesthesia route.  We walked down to the food court and got his favorite, a meatball sub and a shake.  Then we had to go get the boys from kindergarten.  I had called them and told them we'd be late picking them up because we were still at the hospital.  They were very understanding which made me feel better.  Brian was in an important meeting with his boss and really couldn't get away.

And that was how the summer of Isaac came to an abrupt halt.  No swimming for 4 weeks until the cast comes off.  Then a brace goes on for another 4 weeks in which he is still not allowed to do any activity that could lead to a fall or other injury of his arm.  No baseball, no trampoline, no bike riding, no piano, no homeschool gym, no playgrounds, and definitely no bouncy houses.  No fun, nada.  However, on the bright side, no dish washing duty either because the cast can't get wet.  We thought of some things he does like to do that he can still do, like board and card games, reading, cooking, giant dot to dots, Legos, and movies.  I recommended drawing and getting a head start on next year's schoolwork, but those were not received well.  Other good news is that he gets his cast off before our rafting trip and our beach trip.

We signed his cast after his dad talked him into it.  He said, "I don't ever want to remember this."  I told him it wasn't a keepsake, just a fun thing while he has to wear it.

I also want to add that the casting table he was on, was the same one Genevieve was on 9.5 years ago getting a bright pink cast on her arm.  I'd say 9.5 years free of broken bones was a pretty good run for a family of eight.    If you want to see a picture of that pink-casted cutie, follow this link.