Backs and Braces. Fractures and Casts

First Back X-ray

Lots to catch up on, first of all we had the 3 week x-ray of Kate's back to see if the brace is helping at all. This is with her wearing the brace. That is in this first picture. We were told that the brace was doing the job we wanted it to and to return again in 6 weeks or so and take an x-ray without the brace on and see how things look.

In the meantime, we have been getting used to wearing this brace. The bottom of it pokes out of her shirt, although luckily at this age, her friends are all really cool about it. Kate is a pretty remarkable girl, hopefully her contagious good spirits will carry through times when kids turn into dirt bags you want to add kids names to a hit list. Yup, that's a warning. I'll take you out, or some other nonsense, if you hurt my baby girl.

Just to make life a little more exciting, I got a call on my way into work that Kate had fallen at school and her wrist hurt, but she didn't think it was serious. Kate never cried or anything. I had Kate's dad look at it and he didn't think it looked swollen so he sent her off to a play date. I got home from work about 7 pm and looked at her wrist and instantly knew something was wrong. So, urgent care closed at 8 so we jumped in the car and made a mad dash. Sure enough, Kate had a fracture all the way through her radius right below her growth plate. They gave her a splint and orders to be seen at Rady Children's at the beginning of the next week. They asked if we had ever been there or know anything about the orthopedics there and Kate looked at me and rolled her eyes. She laughed when the doctor stepped out and said 'hello, like I live at Rady Children's'. This was Thursday night, October 30th. I took her trick or treating with her friends on Friday night.

Urgent Care

Kate already had an appointment on Tuesday the 4th for her back check up to do x-rays without her brace, so they just added the wrist for good measure. We took the x-ray we had taken at urgent care so she only had her spine x-rays done. She really didn't want a cast, but of course, a cast we got. She has a great sense of humor about it though, she had already had  red, blue, and green casts and all that was left was purple, pink and black. I refused to let her have black, no reason in particular. And Kate refuses to wear pink, I may have screwed up my girls in this regard. So, purple it is, and we decided that IF there's a next cast, we will start over at red again.

Her back pictures looked good and we go back in 4 months to do another x-ray. Until then, she wears the brace 20 hours a day. Honestly, sometimes her back hurts now when she's not in the brace so she usually wears it most of the time.

Her cast on her wrist will stay on until December 1st. Which isn't horrible, except she was supposed to go swimming with the otters this weekend. Argh, postponing that was a drag. The facility was very sweet about it though. Probably going in January. We are back to washing hair in the sink, wrapping her wrist in plastic for a bath, just all of it.

You can see Kate getting her cast on and getting her back pictures taken in the two pictures. By the time we got back to the car Kate was kind of sad, who can blame her, right?  The smile came when I told her we would ditch school the rest of the day and go to eat at a vegetarian Chinese food place she's been wanting to try. It wasn't bad, actually. And Kate cleared her plate of orange 'chicken' so I'd say it was a success.

 I took Kate and Noah to the park today and watched her climb all over with her back brace hanging out and her wrist in a cast, and a smile on her face. Sometimes I find myself thinking about her health, about my health, about how much I miss Abby, who is doing fantastically in France, and I find myself getting tears in my eyes, lump in my throat. I can turn it off pretty fast, lots of practice. I turned it off again today. The kids and I got in the car to come home and proceeded to drive into the garage. Until I realized I wasn't moving very fast and it dawned on me that I had boxes of books that are going to be picked up tomorrow by UPS going to a client. Holy freak. I got out and saw that four boxes were squeezed, squished, and totally stuck under the front of my vehicle. It was a laugh or cry moment. Noah and Kate got out and saw the disaster and looked at me, waiting to see the reaction. I looked at them both and just said 'bummer'. We eventually got a knife out and literally cut the boxes open and took out each book. Not one book was damaged, which was crazy, because the boxes were in unbelievable shape. As Noah helped me get new boxes and weigh the books again, we were talking about life and things we deal with, and he said that if someone were to look at my life, they would think it was kind of bad, not very fun. But, day to day, he thought we were doing pretty good and I seemed happy. That was good to hear. And it's the truth, moment to moment, day to day, life is great. 

 ***Have to add what happened last night, part of why life is really OK even when it's not. So when we were cutting the boxes open, laying on the driveway, heads under my vehicle, Noah and Kate were discussing the imminent damage were were going to find in box number 2 because it just looked gnarly, no way the books will be alright. They sounded so concerned, I just thought it was cute. I looked at them and said 'this is hilarious'. They both looked at me like I had gone totally bonkers, Haha. So I said, 'well, not right this minute, but someday we are going to be sitting around and it will be totally funny when we start talking about that time Mom ran over her books'.  Late last night I was sitting on the couch repairing some antique books, these came to me damaged, I swear, I had no hand in it. Anyway, Noah came up to me and started talking to me about the Captain America that was on the TV and then turns to me and says, 'remember that time you ran over all your books? That was hilarious'. See what I mean! How can life not be great with kids like mine. :)