Four Part Harmony

Well, it’s been an interesting few days to say the least. Monday morning I got a call at work from Nicki saying that she’d slipped while coming down the stairs with Anna in her arms, and that Anna had hurt her leg. (To answer everyone’s immediate first question, Nicki’s fine, Acorn’s fine…it was a pretty minor stumble). I ended up coming home from work to try to help out. It seemed like Anna’s foot hurt, but there was no swelling or discoloration or anything. We were concerned, but figured that nothing seemed broken so it wouldn’t do much good to drag her in to the emergency room. Then yesterday I was home with Anna all day. Her leg seemed worse not better, but still no visible swelling. You could tell it was painful for her though. By the end of the day we began to realize that we needed to get her in for an X-ray, if only for our own peace of mind.

This afternoon we managed to get an appointment at the clinic to have her examined. Before they even took the X-ray they said that there was a fracture. They thought it might have been a “toddler’s fracture” which I guess is a kind of spiraling hairline fracture that’s evidently pretty common in kids her age. They said we could almost just bypass the X-ray room and go straight to the cast room. But of course we needed to get the X-ray. Anna was a model patient, very cooperative. They took three pictures and sent us over to the cast room.

When we got a look at the X-rays it was clear this was no hairline toddler’s fracture. The tibia was completely broken and the fibula has kind of a splinter broken off of it (there’s my non-professional, technical diagnosis). Thankfully the breaks were in a relatively good place, and were aligned well enough to not need anything more than a cast, and just a short one at that. We had been worried that she might need a full leg cast, but they just put it on the lower leg.

Anna chose red for her cast, and she laid very still, holding my hand while Nicki held her leg and the doc wrapped on the cast. She cried for just a brief moment when he was done, and asked him to take it off, but she understands that it’s helping her leg feel better. We have an appointment in 3 1/2 weeks to have the cast removed. In a few days she should be up and walking around on it.

She’s been a different person since we’ve been back from the hospital. Lots of laughs and smiles, which have been harder to come by these last few days. We went out for pizza to celebrate tonight, and then we all signed the cast when we got home. It’s nice to know she’s on the mend.