Monday, November 23, 2009

Is it broken or not?



About 10 days ago, my daughter went down the street to play with her friend. She was back home within 5 minutes screaming her head off. She had been twirling around, got dizzy, and fell onto the concrete, and of course put her arms out to catch herself. She finally calmed down, and mostly just her wrist hurt. I am over-protective, and she over-reacts (drama queen style), but I thought her wrist may have been sprained. It was a Thursday night, so we decided to wait and see how it felt. It was still sore on Friday and Saturday, it was swollen, and she was favoring it, so I kept it wrapped up. By Sunday she was really complaining about how bad it hurt - worse than it had been. I called the doctor on Monday and got a late afternoon appointment. The doctor checked her wrist and declared it was most likely broken - which made me feel like crap for assuming it was just a sprain. We went next door to the hospital for X-Rays. The doctor called us at home within 30 minutes and said it was NOT broken.

Tuesday goes by, her wrist still hurts. Wednesday it still hurts. Thursday it still hurts. So we called her doctor back and he suggested seeing an orthopedist. Somehow we got lucky and got into the orthopedist the next day, which was this past Friday. He looked at the X-Ray and declared her wrist IS broken, so they put a cast on it. Evidently the break is near a growth plate, so they are worried about long term problems. After 3 weeks they will take off the cast and see how the pain and swelling is and make a decision to recast for another 3 weeks or not.