Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Grace's Broken Arm

Last Thursday, the girls and I met some friends at a local mall to play. Grace loved the blow up rock wall and slide and the trampoline that was set up outside of Toys R Us and she spent nearly an hour climbing up slides, riding bikes, and pushing cars inside of the store.

Of course, the moment I began digging around in the stroller for something is when disaster struck.

I looked up to see Grace falling backwards off of a one foot high platform (where the bikes were displayed,) and her right arm was straight behind her.

Before she even hit the ground I knew it would not be good. The security guard tried to catch her but we were all just too far away.

She screamed and cried and immediately asked to go "night-night," and asked for her paci. It broke my heart. I snuggled with her and tried to figure out if she was hurt or just freaked out. My friend ran off to buy some candy (I know, we are awesome, but we couldn't get her to stop crying and we didn't know if it was because she was hurt or not!)

Of course, five minutes and a fistful of jellybeans later and she was fine. We headed home and put her down for a nap but when she got up, she was favoring that arm and wasn't putting weight on it. She would move it and even use it, but I knew she wasn't using it like she should.

We really wrestled with whether or not to take her in to the doctor. I even called my mom to ask her opinion. In the end we decided to see how she did the following day.

The next day was Friday, our church day here. We went to church, Grace played in nursery, and then we had our church's annual luncheon at a hotel. Grace ran around like a maniac and played hard, but she was still not using that hand. She had a sad moment when she was running in the ballroom and tried to run outside and ended up smacking into the glass door. Poor baby. She got a big bruise in the outline of a circle on her cheek!

We came home and she napped but when she got up from her nap and I was changing her, she cried out a couple of times. That was the last straw for me. I knew something was just not right. I took Grace into our local ER and we were able to see the doctor after a 2 hour wait. The doctor didn't know what was wrong but sent us for x rays, which were traumatizing. Grace cried and said "All done!" over and over.

By the time we got back to the doctor, the x rays had been developed and sent to the doctor. Immediately she saw the fracture, at the top of her right humerus bone, the upper arm. They couldn't find a sling small enough for her so they wrapped her up in an ace bandage and said that we should see the orthopedist within 10 days.

Grace hated the bandages the first day and I had to rewrap them every 10 minutes until I figured out a way to wrap it to cover her hand and keep her upper arm parallel to her body. We got into the doctor on day four after the ER and he downgraded her wrap to a fabric triangle sling and said she has a green stick fracture.

She isn't in much pain but keeping her off of it is a definite challenge! She misses using her hand but I hope to only have to use the sling for another week!

Hopefully this will not be the first of many breaks!

8 comments:

Emily Powell said...

poor baby!

Kelli said...

So sorry! Sweet thing!

Lyndsey said...

Poor Grace! Why do those things always happen the second you look down, ya know?! I hope she doesn't have to wear it for long for everyone's sake :)

Emily said...

Poor baby! Hopefully it heals quickly and she can be back to normal soon!

Lauren said...

poor sweet girl! thankfully little kids seem to heal fast, so prayers for a quick recovery!

Kayla Rae said...

Poor baby! How sad!

Natalie said...

Poor little thing :( Hope she heals quickly! WE had something similar happen a few weeks ago with Callyn and my husband rushed her right into the ER. We were convinced it was broken the way she was holding it and wouldn't use it, but it ended up that she dislocated her elbow and they were able to put it back into place!

Callie said...

Poor thing! She sounds like such a sweetheart even when she's hurt though - so cute. :-)