This afternoon while cruising the little two-seater in the family room, Alex fell.  It seemed like a “normal” toddler fall but I realized very quickly that something was amiss.  He wouldn’t stop crying or settle after I held him for 10-15 minutes.  He was not really moving his right arm so I was concerned and called my personal nurse mother-in-law to ask her opinion.  After we talked, I called our pediatrician who advised me to take Alex to urgent care for an x-ray, concurring with Fran that it could be a break of some kind (arm, shoulder, clavicle).  Andy left his training session early to pick up Sarah from school and I carted Alex and Char to the UC.  Over the course of the next 3.5 hours, Alex had three x-ray sessions (Sarah also had a chest x-ray and blood draw to follow-up from her MRSA pneumonia bout last fall—we figured if we were already there, we may as well get it over with).  Alex’s x-rays showed no break but because he can bear absolutely no weight on that arm when he tries to crawl, the doc is concerned he might have done something to the soft tissue.  

Alex left with a “posterior splint” on his arm.  He was none-too-pleased to have that applied but he’s figuring it out.  He slept fairly well, only waking twice for a few minutes each.  When he woke up in the morning, his little hand was swollen to almost three times its normal size.  I felt awful for him so I was anxious to get to the orthopedist to figure out a plan.

After trying for 90 minutes to reach the ortho office, they finally opened at 9am and I got through.  The receptionist said that they were all booked up for this week and that we could get in next week.  I told her that the urgent care doc insisted that we see the orthopedist today because he's so young.  She took my number and called back about 90 minutes later to say that we could come right then and they'd squeeze us in.  Praise God for sympathetic people.  I was so grateful.

I carted Charlotte off to kindergarten screening and booked it to the ortho office.  After some collaboration, the docs concluded that Alex has an occult fracture in his elbow and he also had a slight case of nursemaid's elbow.  The doc rotated Alex's arm and "fixed" the nursemaid's thing (with which Alex was none-too-pleased) but said that he definitely needed a cast for several weeks to allow that fracture to heal.  I chose a blue cast and the nurse was amazingly fast in applying the casting materials.  I was taken aback by her swiftness and how quickly the fiberglass netting set up. 

Alex is now learning how to get around with his cast and he's taken a one-armed buns scooch approach.  So far, it's working for him.  It will be interesting to see how his crawl evolves over the next few weeks.  I'm sure he'll master it...just in time for the cast to come off!   Every once in a while, he looks at his cast and touches it with his other hand, as if trying to figure out how it got there and how to get it off. 

While I was out to dinner with a friend, Alex had a cast-signing party and got the signatures of his daddy and sisters.  He's proud to display the family love on his big, blue cast.   I wonder how many more signatures he'll acquire before the cast is removed.  Wanna sign?