One night at dinner, Amelia was bragging that she was the only kid in our family (besides Eleanor, of course) that hadn’t broken a bone! Knock on wood…
I was a few minutes late to school pick-up and got there when the kids had already been released to go play on the playground (usually when I get there, they are still lining up in their classrooms). I had just arrived and had said hello to Miss Shah when we heard an ear-splitting shriek in the direction of the monkey bars. Amelia appeared, clutching her wrist and screeching like a banshee. It took her a few minutes to get out what had happened, but eventually, between sobs, she screamed that she had fallen off the monkey bars.
I tried to comfort her and get her out the door as efficiently as possible, but Samantha and Meredith were huddled around clinging to my legs, and with Eleanor wiggling in the Ergo carried, it was not easy lumbering out of there with lunchboxes, coats, and all their work from the day. After a few minutes, Amelia still hadn’t stopped sobbing, and her wrist had swollen up like crazy, so Miss Linda gave us some ice for the road and Miss Debbie helped us to the car.
I thought for sure she had just injured it, maybe sprained it and would go back to playing like normal at home once all the drama was over. But for the rest of the afternoon, she laid on the couch, miserable, with a towel and pack of frozen veggies on her wrist. I went ahead and called the orthopedist for an appointment first thing in the morning.
We gave her some tylenol and wrapped it, plus put a brace on it for the night (the same brace Samantha had when she broke her arm on the zipline two summers ago).
By the morning, Amelia was calm, but her arm was still very swollen and she couldn’t twist it, although she could move all her fingers and flex. Amelia was thrilled to go to the orthopedist with me, while Samantha had a teary, tantrum filled morning since Amelia wouldn’t be joining her at school for a few hours. Amelia and Meredith were so excited to see the x-ray machine and play with all the toys at the doctor’s office that I thought for sure Amelia must have just really injured it. She wasn’t acting like it hurt in the least.
After her x-ray, the nurse displayed in on the light screen while she went to grab Dr. Davis. You’d think I’d be an expert at reading x-rays by now, but when I looked at it, my first thought was, “Oh good! It’s not broken.”
Then Dr. Davis entered and the first thing she said was, “So, it’s broken.”
WHAAAAAAAAT? I immediately texted and Jake and his response was, “NOOOOO WAY!”
And so it was that Amelia joined the Broken Bone Club.
For the life of me, I could not see any breaks at all in the wrist. Dr. Davis pointed out to me a teeny tiny line on different views of her wrist and told me she had fractured both her right ulna and radius, but she could have been totally making the whole thing up and I would have never known! She said the breaks were consistent with landing on the ground with wrists flexed up, and wasn’t surprised when I told her she had fallen from the monkey bars. She sees this every day and didn’t seem concerned that Samantha had broken the exact same bone a few years ago.
While Dr. Davis was applying Amelia’s cast, she took one look at Meredith, who was running around the office, tripping on a bouncy ball, and said, “I can see why your kids break bones! They are pretty active!” Of course, I was freaking out that this was our third break within the year, but Dr. Davis said she wasn’t concerned because it was just a combination of them being very active, bad luck, and the fact that they are pretty tall and their bones growing so fast. They are also a little clumsy!
Amelia chose yellow for her cast and was beyond excited to show her classmates at school.
When I came back to pick her up, she was glowing with all the attention. Everyone in class and the teachers signed it!
When we got home, her enthusiasm waned when reality hit. She couldn’t play on the monkey bars or zipline at the park, or play in the sand. She had a few rough nights getting used to sleeping with it, and bathtime was a huge pain for me. Even though it was a waterproof cast, we still had to dry it with a hair dryer if it got wet or else it smelled, so I wrapped it in a garbage bag or Meredith’s old rubber cast cover for baths. Just one more thing to worry about and it was super annoying! It was also very itchy by the end of the day, so I’d spend a few minutes after school each day scratching her arm for her with a popsicle stick!
Amelia had just started softball, too, and was doing really well with catching, throwing and hitting. Her broken arm put a damper on things for a few weeks, but luckily, it ended up raining almost every weekend and the games were cancelled anyway, so we didn’t miss out on too much. She was a trooper and every day would tell me proudly of all the things she did with her broken arm that day (climbing, drawing, writing, getting dressed by herself, swinging). Her piano teacher, Miss Jenny, was super concerned because her first recital was only two weeks away, but not only did she continue to practice with her cast, she played in the recital and did a great job!
Amelia had the cast on for four weeks, and boy were we happy to take it off. It’s easy to take things for granted when everything is going fine, but having the cast on made us grateful to have two healthy arms! The cast was so smelly and itchy by the end and Amelia was excited to have her right arm back.
At her parent teacher conference, Miss Linda showed me some handwriting from the beginning of the year, and a recent sample.
Unfortunately, it was not a great example of her progress, because the sample was from one day after she broke her wrist! Not bad for a broken wrist, though!
Lots of love,
