My Poor Baby!!!

We have had a rather interesting 24 hours, though. After spending many hours at church, Alethea had a 30 minute nap. Around 7:30pm she was climbing up in my desk chair, as she does often, and she fell, as she does often. Usually she falls on her butt, but this time she fell on her head and her left arm/hand. She was immediately in tears. Inconsolable. After about 2 hours of her crying, I called Christian to come home and help with the girls so I could attend to Alethea. I finally got Alethea to sleep around 11pm. She slept until about 2:30am and then woke up crying. She wouldn’t really stop either. So, finally we were all able to go to sleep around 4am. Then Rayah woke me up at 7:30am and Alethea woke up soon after.

As I was getting her dressed, she cried a bit when I put her left hand through her shirt sleeves, which immediately caught my attention. I began to watch her and how she was using her hands/arms. I noticed that she was favoring her right arm and nursing her left arm. I began to think she may have either broken or sprained her arm in the fall, so I began to test her to see. I checked her arm, feeling for any breaks. I couldn’t feel anything, but she was tender. So then I tried to give her things to see if she would use both hands, or favor the right one (she’s right handed anyway). She favored her right hand, keeping her left arm pretty much in the same position as much as possible. Then I tried to give her some things that she would have to hold with both hands. Instead of holding them with both, she just grabbed them with her right and set them down because of their weight. Any time she put pressure on her left arm/wrist she cried.

Because of all that I had observed, I decided it would be a good idea to get her in quickly to see a doctor. She was seen at 12pm. He suggested that x-rays would be best because he couldn’t tell if there was a break or not, either, and he noticed her tenderness on her left arm/wrist, as well. So we had to go to a separate building for the x-rays. After about a 10 to 15 minute wait we were finally checked in and then we had about another 5 minute wait before they were ready to start the x-rays. She did NOT like the x-ray. Especially since they wanted her to lay down on the table and then have me manipulate her arm into different positions and hold it there for the picture. I was allowed to be with her, so that was good. Otherwise it would have been worse. She cried from the time I laid her down on the table to the time I was able to pick her back up again. They took 5 different positional pictures.

When we got back to the doctor, he took a look at the x-rays and said that it was definitely broken. She had broken her bone right below her wrist. My poor baby!!!! He had the nurses put a splint on her. I was worried that she would cry and have issues while they were putting it on, but they said that most kids are actually happy and peaceful because it relieves their pain. They were right. She was happy and talkative and NOT whiny! What a relief! Then they scheduled her for the orthepedic doctor, who will fit her for and place her in the cast. She gets her cast on Wednesday at 8:30am. She has to keep it on for 6 weeks, so she should be able to get it removed on Christmas Eve…if they’re open. If they aren’t open, I will have them remove it the day before.

She was so tired from the trials of last night, her pain, and from the long morning and early afternoon, that she fell asleep in the car. When we got home, she went to sleep very quickly and slept for a little over 2 hours. A beautiful thing for me.
Alethea and Rayah’s godfather, Jason, watched Rayah while I took Alethea to her appointment. And I am SO thankful he did, because I could NOT have handled them both with all we had to do for Alethea’s appointment. So, special thanks to Godpoppy! THANK YOU!!!

So tomorrow we're going to the orthepedic doctor to get a cast put on Alethea. I am not looking forward to that. We have to be there by 8am to fill out paperwork and then we have the consultation and finally the casting. The whole things should take about 2 hours. Not my idea of a good time. Luckily Christian is going to be with me to help out. He took some time off of work so he could help with Rayah at the appointment. I'm going to have my hands full with Alethea.

I'm going to ask the orthepedic doctor to give her a soft cast and a water-friendly one. Otherwise they'll give her a cement cast. And she likes to play rough with other kids. A cement cast would be a very bad thing.

So that's it. My Poor Baby has a broken bone!