First Broken Bones

Through all of our ER visits and injuries this is our first broken bone experience with our kids (Travis and I each had multiple in our day).

Carson is helping by pointing out the offending location. Yeah, Emmett took a header off that very spot two days ago.


We were getting the boys down for bed at the time and since it wasn't yet obviously broken, we decided to let Emmett sleep on it and we'd reassess in the morning. What a bummer end to a good day! The boys and I had gone to the library and the zoo with a friend of mine and her girls (I'll get to that post later) which meant Emmett didn't get more than probably 20 minutes of nap.

In the morning he woke way early (6:30) and he still wasn't using his left arm. Travis said it was in the forearm. When I looked at it I could tell it was the area just above his wrist hurting. The hurt arm meant he was very clingy and the lack of nap the day before and the early morning wake up time meant he fell asleep in my lap at 10:30am. When he got up several hours later I could see there was localized swelling at the spot I knew was hurting him so at that point I pretty much knew it was likely broken. I set up with Urgent Care to come in at 5:45 so Grandma H. could watch Avery and Carson while Travis met me at the clinic. I put an ace wrap on it which helped him a ton and I think he was glad to have it!


At urgent care the x-rays confirmed, definitely a break, both the ulna and the radius. They took three pictures, one with palm down thumb at 0 degrees, one with the thumb at 45 degrees and one with the thumb pointing up at 90 degrees. Here, in order of obvious breakage, are the x-rays which we were allowed to get copies of today.
Palm down you can see a little line and deformity at the edges about an inch up the radius (the thicker one) and deformity about a third of an inch up the ulna.


45 degrees shows lumps at those same locations where it should be straight


And at 90 degrees you can really see it. They put in the handy arrows that show all the spots.


So, time to get a splint! Too bad their smallest splint is way too big so his hand is much lower than it should be so that his wrist can be supported.


He's totally giving her a look like "what'd ya do to me!?" He's probably thinking how useless his arm will be now whereas the ace wrap let him still use his finger tips.


Today I called the pediatrician and we have an appointment for Monday morning to get a cast. Waiting a few days for the swelling to go down is going to be a pain with this over-sized splint! In fact, he woke up this morning with it off but the splint was still perfectly wrapped. I'm sure it would hurt too much for him to pull it off so it must have worked its way off.