Sticks and Stones

Sticks and Stones will break my bones AND apparently so will play houses and brooms. Sean wanted to go to church Sunday so I took him over to Catherine's ward so he could go to primary with Tyson. After church Catherine and her boys were going to a birthday party for Maren at Jaclyn's. Catherine invited Sean to come along. About 6:30 I got a call from Catherine saying Sean had fallen from the playhouse in the back yard. Catherine's boys, Jaclyn's girls and a couple of cousins not related to us were all playing king of the fort. There was a toy broom involved. (I'm guessing it was being wielded as a sword). Sean was coming up the ladder and got pushed down by "the cousin in the shirt with the number 2 on it." That cousin was ratted out by his brother Jameson, the identity was later confirmed by Sean when Jackson walked in the room and Sean pointed at him and said "that one!" Catherine said Sean was crying and she had put ice on his arm but she didn't think it was broken. She called a few minutes later in the car to say Sean was asleep. When they got home and Don carried him in the house it was obvious that his arm was broken. It had started to swell and was deformed. He couldn't bend it and said he could feel his bones moving.

Here we are in the ER at Lakeview. We seem to be spending a lot of time there lately. Dr Perry was there. I worked with him for years. "That's an ugly break" he said before the x-ray. Yep, I know that, that's why we are here.

The broken elbow.



Sean has a Supracondylar humerus fracture. I love the information regarding how they happen. "Many activities can cause elbow fractures in children, but jungle gyms are far and away the primary culprit! Kids falling from jungle gyms can injure their elbows as they fall to the ground. Other common activities that cause elbow injuries include gymnastics, football, jumping on beds, and rough play."
It was also interesting to note that these fractures usually occur on the non-dominate arm and happen in a fall greater than three feet where the child lands with their arm outstrectched. It can also happen from a fall directly on the elbow. They kept asking Sean how he fell. "I was pushed!" was his answer. "How did you land" they asked?
"On the ground and it was hard" was his answer. Sean was remarkably good natured about the whole thing. They gave him some lortab in the ER. He was so brave.



When we got home it was late. He was not loving the long arm splint. He only wanted a short arm splint. The orthopedic doctor came in and saw us in the ER and told us to be at the surgery center in Bountiful at 8 a.m.

His fracture was a grade three which is the worst kind so he had to have three pins put in his elbow. They come out of his skin but are under his cast. I was looking at the picture trying to figure out how the heck he was going to move his elbow with all those pins. I asked the doctor "how's he going to move his arm?" He looked at me like I was really stupid and said "he's not he's going to be in a cast." Duh, I was stupid I knew that. We go back to the doctor on Tuesday for some sort of different casting. In three weeks they remove the pins and then in five or six the cast. They pull the pins out in the office with a pair of pliers. (Under duress he said.) No kidding.

Another angle of the Xray.

Sean was so brave when they took him back to the OR. I hate when they take your child away to the OR. Talk about trust. Your going to take my kid, put him to sleep and shove pins in his arm and I'm not there. I felt the same way when they took him for his thumb surgery and when they put in his PICC line. He didn't cry when they took him but told me later he cried when he was back there because I wasn't there and he didn't want to breath in the balloon but then he went to sleep. I'm guessing that all happened quickly because I know they don't want a screaming kid in the OR.  They let us back in the recovery room before he woke up so we were both there and they made us (and him) feel better. He woke up pretty easily.

When we got home he was disgusted. "I thought they were going to FIX IT! It still hurts and he still has a cast, it's not fixed.

On Tuesday he wanted to go to school and show his friends his cast. We went to school for about an hour then we came home and did crafts. Yep, play dough on the bathroom floor. We are fancy people.

He's going to have a lot of split shirts over the next six weeks. Fortunately he has a closet full of shirts many that he never wears. It's a good time to sacrifice those shirts to comfort. We had to buy a bunch of sweat pants because he can't do buttons and zippers.
A couple of days in the cast and he is now complaining about the itching. I give him Lortab and I think that makes the itching worse so we are trying to use Ibuprofen and Bendaryl as much as possible. I add a small amount of Lortab when he's miserable and more at night. The cast is just so dang heavy it weighs his body down and the bruising coming up above the cast just looks awful.  I really hate that he got hurt. From Sean's perspective he's really liked all the presents people have gave him. I don't think the presents compensates for the misery but it does make it a little better.