Elliot Breaks An Arm

At about 1:40 today, Elliot fell off the couch and landed on her wrist/arm. She had been hanging by her legs from the arm of the couch, something she knows she shouldn't do. She was crying and I knew she was hurt. I made sure that I told her that is why she shouldn't hang from the couch.

Fast forward twenty minutes or so, and Elliot is still crying. Elliot is pretty tough. Normally when she gets hurt, she cries for a minute or so, you ask her if she is okay and she stops crying. I decided to call James and let him know that we may have a more serious injury on our hands.

I finally got Elli calmed down and since everything seemed to be operating just fine and there was no swelling or bruising, I put her down for her nap and decided to reassess the situation after she woke up. About an hour later, Elli woke up crying. She continued to cry and I decided that we definitely had something a little more serious on our hands.

James got home and we packed up the kids and headed to our pediatrician to have them assess the situation before we sat for hours on end in the emergency room. They stabilized her wrist with an ace bandage and sent us over for x rays immediately. Once the x rays came up...they are all digital now...the tech said that there seemed to be something of concern. She took the x rays to the radiologist on staff and he recommended that we take Elliot to Urgent Care to have her wrist at least splinted.

We saw a nurse practitioner at Urgent Care and they got her all splinted and bandaged up. She told us that they couldn't cast tonight because the fracture has to be allowed to swell and go back down before they put a cast on it. So, Elliot is in a fiberglass splint and sling. Tomorrow, we will go to the pediatrician and he will decide whether or not to put a cast on it, or to put a more permanent splint on it for the next few weeks.

The official diagnosis, for all those who are taking anatomy, or who actually know this kind of stuff, or for those who care, is a buckle fracture at the distal radius. In English, it is a small fracture in the forearm bone that connects to the wrist. The fracture is at the wrist end (distal) of the bone (radius). It was pretty cool to actually understand what they were telling me!

Did you have any doubt that I would totally record all this for her scrapbook....so, here are the pictures! Isn't she pathetic?

This was at Visalia Imaging, while we waited for an Xray. She is still in quite a bit of pain here.

This was at the Urgent Care clinic after she got all splinted up! She is feeling a bit better by now.

This was at the "cherry place", aka the Olive Garden. The bread sticks somehow made it all better!