Adventures in the Emergency Room

This past Saturday, August 15th, should have been a happy day filled with family, celebrations, and time spent outside in the sunshine. Grandpa T turned 59, and we had planned to spend the day boating, building sandcastles, splashing in the kiddie pool, and generally just getting up to all sorts of fun. Instead...we found ourselves making an unscheduled trip to the emergency room after a certain little someone had a BIG ouch.

C was practicing learning how to go down the stairs with T when he plopped down a single stair and landed with his leg beneath him in a funny position. T was right with C during the entire event, and even had his hands around C's little waist to make sure he wouldn't fall down. He said he heard a click sound when C plopped down, but thought maybe he just popped his hip out and that he would feel better after taking some Tylenol and catching a nap. And that was the end of the story...I tried to calm C down and get him ready for nap time, and T rushed out the door to meet some out-of-town friends he had arranged to have lunch with. 

Except it wasn't the end of the story... Fast forward about an hour or so. C never did take nap. He would be calm for five minutes or so, but then would cry and whimper before settling down again. When T got home from lunch, we gave up on the nap idea, and got C up. He wouldn't put any weight on his left leg, and was so scared when he thought we were going to make him move it that he began shaking. We checked his joints...hip checked out fine, knee checked out fine, but when we moved his ankle...screams. He calmed down while being held stationary in his rocking chair and reading story books (his all time favorite pastime), but these were just distractions from the pain he was in.

So, without further delay, we packed into the car and headed to the emergency room. Luckily, it was a slow day in the ER, and we were able to get right in without having to wait. After being checked into the room, the doctor came in to check C's leg and take him for an X-ray. Many screams later (they had to move his leg to get a couple different angles for the x-ray) it was back to the room to wait for results. A few minutes later, the doctor came in to let us know that C's tibia was indeed broken, and we wouldn't be leaving without a cast. He called the on-call orthopedic surgeon, and in a matter of half and hour, C was all fixed up. Of course when it came to color options for his new accessory, we were thinking practically and opted for black so that C would be ready for the first Iowa football game. Now we just need to find some yellow tiger hawk stickers to really get in game day mode!

Joking aside, breaking his leg was a pretty devastating blow to little C who was just finally starting to make some serious strides on his gross motor skills and learning to pull himself up, crawl, and walk. The orthopedic surgeon who put the cast on assured us that after about five days, his bone will have healed enough that C should be back to his usual ways, and it shouldn't slow him down too much. In the meantime, the first day, we did an altering schedule of infant Tylenol and Advil, iced his leg every few hours with a cold pack to keep the swelling down (I'm not convinced of the effectiveness of this through the cast), read lots of storybooks, kept his leg elevated as much as possible, and spent lots of time snuggling. 

Cousin J was in town to help celebrate Grandpa T's birthday, and for the most part was super mindful of C's broken leg. Right before I snapped this pic, the two boys were laying together so nicely and cousin J was sharing his books with C. The minute I took a picture, J stepped right on C's broken leg, and that was the end of that. In happier news, C absolutely fell in love with cousin J's adorable Tractors and Farm Trucks book and all of the miniatures inside, and I may or may not have ordered it and the companion Rescue and Emergency Vehicles to surprise him with later this week. Little boys with a broken legs should be spoiled just a little bit right?!

C has been such a little champ, and slept the first night after breaking his leg until around 3 a.m. when his medicine wore off. He didn't need any additional daytime medicine the following day, and only took medicine at night. Day two he was able to tolerate sitting up, and last night he started to crawl around a little, even sleeping through the night with no meds at all! His cast will stay on for the next three weeks, then he'll go back for a checkup and another x-ray. If everything looks good, he should be able to have it removed then. Here's hoping that the rest of his recovery will go smoothly!