Talking Whiteheads

With all three kids home during the summer, plus a newborn, life was already pretty chaotic to being with. But apparently, we were becoming too complacent with our “easy” summer and needed something to complicate life, because clearly, we needed something else to worry about!

What better complication than a toddler fracturing her knee and needing a full length cast on her leg for the duration of the summer? Sign me up!

It was a Friday and Meredith, Eleanor and I had taken Bandit out on a quick walk around the neighborhood. Meredith was on her scooter, as per the usual, when on her way back (which is slightly uphill), she hit a part of the sidewalk that was partly raised and had a big crack. She fell over, twisting her legs over one another and started crying. I’ve seen many harder falls than that from her, so this was about par for the course. I helped her up, she stopped crying after a few minutes and she scootered home.

An hour later, however, during dinner, Meredith started melting down with an intensity beyond her normal tantrums and began complaining about her knee. She started limping, so I helped her upstairs, gave her some tylenol, and she went to bed, still complaining. That night, she woke up several times moaning about her knee, but there wasn’t a lot we could do at that point, so we comforted her as best we could and got through the night.

The next morning, she seemed to feel better, although she still limped around. We figured maybe she had strained her knee or torn a ligament, so we tried to get her to rest and elevate her leg with an ice pack, but she would have none of that. When the twins went for a bike ride, she screamed that she wanted to go too! She hopped on her strider bike before anyone could stop her and valiantly tried to chase after the twins, with only one leg pushing the bike! This definitely overexerted her and the rest of the day, she unhappily hung out on the couch or was carried from room to room as she wouldn’t put any weight on her left leg.

Saturday night was more of the same, and she tossed and turned all night, clearly miserable. We decided to wait until Monday to go into the orthopedist instead of going to the ER, so Sunday she was miserable and laid up on the couch! Her knee wasn’t particularly swollen, so at this point, we both figured it was some kind of bad sprain.

Monday morning, I took her into the ortho for an x-ray. Meredith was so excited during all of it, and the twins were extremely jealous (we don’t know why, but they looooove going to the doctor). When the doctor put the x-ray up to the light, I sighed in relief because I couldn’t see any kind of break. Not so fast… the doctor’s first words were, “So, she’s going to need a full-length cast.”

I burst out laughing. “YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME??!!”

Sadly, she was not joking. My jaw hung open as I tried to grasp how it could really be fractured when she’s taken much harder spills and falls in the past. The ortho said it was the perfect storm and that she had landed in exactly the right spot on the cracked sidewalk, even if it wasn’t a forceful impact. She pointed out the tiniest of tiny little cracks near Meredith’s kneecap and said that based on the fact that she wouldn’t put any weight on the leg, was very sensitive whenever the doctor tried to touch her knee and the teeny tiny crack showing up on the x-ray, the best course of action was to cast it. A full length cast was the only option for a break in this location, and unlike Samantha, who had a waterproof cast on her arm last summer, the doctor wouldn’t do a waterproof cast this time for the leg because they are harder to dry out and get dirty/smelly a lot faster. Awesome!

Still completely in denial, I was led into the casting room where Meredith picked out a pink cast and in a few minutes, it was on! Meredith immediately started to feel a little bit better as the cast made getting around less painful for her. She still wouldn’t put any weight on her left leg that day, but seemed in much better spirits.

This is the craziest part… Samantha broke her arm falling off a zipline at the playground last August. I looked up when it was and it was ONE YEAR EXACTLY TO THE DAY that Meredith got her cast on! And both were total freak accidents. Let’s just hope next August 13th doesn’t bring us any more broken bones… I will be staying inside that day and bubble wrapping everyone. Jake and I are now one and one on broken bones… the first thing he said when I texted him from the orthopedist was, “I’m glad this one wasn’t on my watch!”

The first full day with her cast, Meredith looked pretty forlorn and was not the happy, hyper Meredith we’re used to. It was so sad seeing her sit all day on the floor, playing with her trains and magnatiles, and only moving when we carried her up and down the stairs or around the house. On the bright side, while she normally terrorized the house and created messes anytime I was feeding the baby, at least with her cast, she pretty much stayed put wherever she was placed, so I didn’t have to worry about that as much! On Day 2, I was on my bed feeding the baby and had left Meredith in the playroom. All of a sudden, I heard a scraaaaaatch, slide, scraaaaaaatch, slide… Meredith slowly appeared in the bedroom, sliding on her tummy with her arms outstretched, dragging her lame leg behind her! It was pretty forlorn looking, but A for Effort on Meredith’s part! She even managed to wiggle over to the bed and hoist herself up, dragging her heavy leg behind her.

Once she accomplished crawling down the hallway and climbing the bed, that was the end of staying in the same place! She crawled everywhere for another day, by Day 3, she was brave enough to start hobbling around on her leg and crawling up stairs, and by Day 4, she was literally running, scootering, climbing, you name it!  Everyone who saw her at the park with her cast on had their mouths hanging open in awe… this girl was not going to let a little thing like a cast stop her from anything.

Two beat-up toddlers! Between Maple falling and hitting her face on furniture at home and Meredith breaking her knee, they looked like little ragamuffins!

At this point in the summer, our one saving grace for surviving with newborn Elle was our pool, making it so easy for the kids to burn off some energy, without packing the baby and everyone up. And now even this was more complicated! The first week Meredith had the cast, I was feeling very sorry for both her and myself (mostly myself haha), but after a few days of getting used to taking care of the cast, it became manageable and the world kept on turning. Since her cast was not waterproof, we bought a cover for it which did a very thorough good job of keeping water out of it in the bath and the pool. She couldn’t really swim since the cast was so heavy, but at least she could cool off a little by hanging out on a floatie.

Hey, Gimpy! This is what Jake called her for the four weeks she had her cast on, and she thought it was hilarious!

Sand at the park was another danger zone as the last thing we wanted was for her to be itchy! We tried to avoid sand as much as we could, but we did do a few beach and park trips with the cover on her cast, and it worked out fine. The worst part was getting her dressed for the day, and the annoying task of putting on that ugly and hot cover whenever we were going out so that her cast didn’t get dirty/wet/sandy. Also, Meredith had been doing great with potty training up until that point, but because we didn’t want to deal with accidents and the cast, we let her revert back to pull-ups and had to re-train her all over again once the cast was off. Again, we clearly needed our lives to be harder this summer!

Meredith loved having all her friends sign her cast. Last year, Samantha wouldn’t let anyone sign hers!

Meredith and the twins enjoyed lots of cookies, brownies, and other goodies sent by kind family and friends wishing Meredith a quick recovery!

Just because you have a broken knee doesn’t get you out of chores…

I had to buy Jake all new socks because we used those to protect Meredith’s toes poking out of the bottom of the cast when we went outside. The socks had holes in them after one day of use, so we’d discard and pick out a new sock from his sock drawer!

Meredith always asks to “practice” the piano after the twins do their practice each day.

At the beginning of the ordeal, four weeks seemed like it would be an eternity, but time flies when you have a toddler in a cast, a newborn, two crazy older sisters and a hot, hot summer to keep you occupied!

Lots of love,