Y’all, Andy’s leg is broken!
It happened on Sunday when he and Josh went down a slide together at a playground. Andy’s shoe caught on the plastic slide and bent backwards as they went down, and it actually broke his leg! Apparently this is a common playground injury, with 14% of toddler leg fractures happening in just this way. Who knew?! If you have a toddler or a small child, you should read more about this here.
Don’t go down together! This picture is old but it met the basic requirements of containing Andy and a slide
He cried for a while after it happened (not like him at all) and was just not his cheery self the rest of that night. We knew something was wrong because Andy wouldn’t walk or put any weight on his leg. He kept saying “knee hurt,” but he could bend everything and after a couple of days it didn’t hurt to the touch. It was hard for us to figure out if he was really hurt or not, but the fact that he wouldn’t even take a step on that leg for days was the big red flag.
Andy was still hurting on Monday and wouldn’t put any weight on his leg, so we took him to the doctor. She said that it was probably sprained, and we should give him ibuprofen and put ice on it, and if it wasn’t better in a few days then go back for x-rays. On Wednesday it still wasn’t better, so we made another appointment and went to see another doctor this morning. The doctor examined him and couldn’t find anything that seemed wrong. He said we could do x-rays or we could wait a few more days and see if it got better, but we’d already done that. He was being cautious because we’re self-paying and didn’t want to saddle us with a huge x-ray bill unnecessarily. After we explained about our Christian health-sharing ministry and that the money really wasn’t a factor because we’d be covered, he said it would be safest to do the x-rays. (We love Samaritan Ministries – our “insurance.” Check it out here. If you sign up using our name then we get a credit! 🙂 )
We went straight from that doctor’s office to the children’s hospital for the x-rays. The children’s hospital was really cool, and they had the best waiting room! There was a TV playing the movie Tangled in the corner (we’d just missed our favorite song!) and had all these toys and things, including a big bubble machine thing, for Andy to play with. He probably would’ve stayed in there all day. Even the radiology check-in desk office was lively!
We’d been telling Andy for a couple of days that if his leg didn’t feel better then we’d have to go back to the doctor and probably get pictures taken of his bones. So we’d been prepping him for this and when we went into the x-ray room we said “look at this cool camera!” and things like that so he wasn’t freaked out. He was a champ and did great. He stayed really still on the table that moved (also cool) and the workers were really nice to him. They said we would know the results sometime today.
(terrible pic of me) (yes, I cut my hair – that blog post is in the works)
Then Josh had to go back to school. (HUGE shout out to his co-worker Jose for watching Josh’s first class so he could stay with us for the x-rays. Thank you, Jose! We owe you much more than sweet tea.) Andy and I went to Buc-ees – I needed gas and it’s the cheapest around, so that was my excuse. Also, we could get lunch there. So we did. Then we came home to eat, and while we were eating I got a call from the doctor with the x-ray results. He said there was a small fracture in Andy’s tibia and it would need a splint or a cast. He’d been able to squeeze us in with a pediatric orthopedic doctor at 3 this afternoon, and told us where to go. After continuing the string of mass text updates that had been going on throughout the day and googling pictures of toddlers in leg casts, we laid down and took a nap.
We woke up and it was time to go to the next appointment. We had to go to the so-and-so Roney Bone and Joint Institute, but I call it Roneybone, cause it sounds funny. Josh met us there after his last class. We had to wait for a while and it was challenging to keep Andy occupied/entertained, but finally the doctor came.
He showed us the x-rays and where the fracture was, and talked to me a little about how to care for Andy’s cast.
Honestly he didn’t have my full attention, because the person who actually puts on the cast was starting to do that and I didn’t want to miss it, but I tried to be respectful and at least get the important parts. Andy didn’t really seem to care about the color of his cast so Josh and I picked it out and we went with dark blue, after having been told that the light blue gets really dirty really quickly. So there you go. Andy sat in Josh’s lap while the man put layer upon layer of stuff on his leg. He was pretty enthralled by the whole thing so it wasn’t even an issue having him sit still.
Then it was done, and we could go. Andy has to wear his cast until we go back to the orthopedic doctor in four weeks, at which time they’ll do more x-rays and assess what to do from there.
They’d just started cutting off someone else’s cast when this picture was taken. It was a very loud noise!
Afterward we went to Ye Olde English Bakery and let Andy pick out what he wanted. He had been a trooper all day long, not to mention living with a broken leg for five days. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, and by ‘spoonful of sugar’ I mean cupcake and by ‘medicine go down’ I mean leg get better.
*all pictures are from Google Images, except where noted.
The Essary Family 