floppy

I know Andrew only had a broken wrist, and it doesn’t sound that bad as I’m typing it out, but goodness we had a whirlwind of a weekend right before we were trying to go on vacation back in October. 

 

Thursday afternoon I was inside baking cookies for Carson’s preschool Fall Festival and the kids were outside playing like they usually do.  I checked on them a couple of times, told them not to tackle each other and wrestle because they would probably end up getting hurt.  I had come in to take the last batch of cookies out of the oven and I hear crying outside.  I run to see what’s going on and I met Andrew opening the front door screaming saying, “Myyyy arrrrm issss flooooppy Mommy!!”  It took him forever it seemed to say those words and then I looked down and saw exactly what he was talking about.

I have only seen one other wrist that looked like this, and it was a little boy who had fallen off the monkey bars at one of Spencer’s Kindergarten field trips.  They had taken this other little boy to the hospital, and he ended up having to have surgery on it immediately.  So all of these thoughts were running through my head as I called Shaun in a panic and in shock.  After getting Andrew some frozen peas to put on his arm, and calming down a little, I called Urgent Care thinking that my aunt was working and she would be able to give me some advice to where I should go.  The lady that answered was another friend of ours and she told me to bring him on in to there because they had an x-ray machine and would be able to see if it was broken or not.  So I tried to put everyone in the car as fast as I could.  I say tried…because I had a million boxes of teacher supplies and books {okay…only 5…but still… those things were HEAVY} someone had let me look through, in the back seat of the car where I needed Andrew to sit.  So I had to run all of them inside the house.  In the meantime, I tried to calm down Andrew…I had to have him sit on the running board of the car with his arm propped up on the floorboard while I took the boxes inside…and tried to calm down Spencer too.  He was really shaken up because he was the one that had jumped on Andrew in the first place to tackle him.  After all this, we headed down the road.  I’m guessing the frozen peas numbed Andrew’s arm a little, because he was actually calm on the ride to the Urgent Care…probably calmer than I was.  I kept praying though that everything would be okay. 

And everything was, collectively speaking.  Things went smoothly and Andrew took all of the pain quite well.  They gave him some pain meds almost immediately when we got there.  He pitches a fit usually when he has to get a shot, but he welcomed the shot in his hip I think only because his arm was hurting so bad.  They knew it was broken immediately by looking at it, but the x-ray confirmed that it was.  Their first thought was that he was going to have to have surgery.  Then they tried to put the bones back in place…and for a mama standing by the doctor as he is doing this…trying to comfort their child…was HARD!! They “reduced” the fracture a little to make his arm look a little straighter and to relieve some of the pressure and splinted his arm up.  They sent us home with some pain medicine and with instructions to wait on a call from them to see what time we would have an appointment with the orthopaedic doctor the following morning.  I was on pins and needles waiting for that phone to ring.  The finally called and Andrew got an appointment at 3:00 and they held a 5:00 surgery slot in case we needed it. 

When we went to the orthopaedic doctor, we had two options…

1.  Leave the arm the way it was and it would be jacked up looking, but the bones would probably regenerate themselves.  We would have to come back every day for a couple of days for them to make sure the bones had not shifted.  And in the end we might have to have surgery anyways.

2.  Go ahead and have surgery where they would place the bones back together and place a pin to hold the bones in place.  We would have to come back in a week or so to have them x-ray it and make sure everything was fine.

We went ahead and opted for them to do surgery because I felt that was the best way to fix the problem.  Shaun had given Andrew a blessing before we left the house, so I knew that whatever happened or was supposed to happen, we would feel good about it.  And we did. 

Andrew didn’t say a whole lot the entire day…probably because of the pain meds making him loopy.  The only time he got upset and cried was when they told him that he was going back with the surgeon and we were going to wait for him in the waiting room.  The nurse had to take him kicking and screaming.  They gave him the gas to put him to sleep and I know it only took a matter of seconds, but still seeing him going back like that knowing he was scared tugged on my heart a little. 

The surgery went well…lasted only about 45 minutes…and when the doctor showed me the after x-ray, I just cried.  It looked so perfect compared to what it was before. We were home before 9:00 Friday night.

I know a lot of prayers went up in our behalf and I’m so grateful to be blessed with an amazing family,,,and friends.

Andrew only had to keep his cast on for a few weeks…the main thing I remember is I had to cut his fingernails every other day.  His body was regenerating in overtime!

When we went in to have the pin removed, there were complications and the pin got embedded in his skin so he had to have another surgery to get the pin out.  Poor little guy…he’s been through it the last little bit.  BUT I have to report that everything is perfect and we’re grateful that no other bones have broken the past couple of months. 

Here’s some pictures along the journey of recovery…

I’ll save everyone from seeing the actual wound pictures after everything was taken off ☺It does look a hundred times better now though!!