Our First Broken Bone

Well, the new year had started off pretty peacefully. We've all gotten over our colds and recovered from jet lag. I was even getting caught up on laundry today when the school called to say that Gracie had fallen on the playground and was in some pretty serious pain. Scott's office is right across the street from the school so I immediately called and asked him to go check things out. Very shortly after that I got a call back from Scott saying Gracie needed to go to the hospital for an x-ray. My heart just sank because I knew with Scott's coaching experience and first aid training, if he thought it needed an x-ray, he suspected it was broken.

So I packed up the boys and met them over at the hospital where I found Gracie in pain but no tears in sight. Her voice was shaky but she was a trooper as she described to me what happened. Gracie and her girlfriends were doing cartwheels on the paved part of the playground. The problem was that Gracie was wearing fashion boots with very little tread, so when she went over, her feet slid out from under her and she landed hard on her left arm and broke it!

The good news is that it is a "radial head fracture" and with this location they do not use a hard cast, but instead splint the arm in a type of soft cast and apply a sling. They encourage early movement of the joint to keep her from losing range of motion. She'll be in the splint w/sling for about 2 weeks and then another couple weeks in just the sling. The doctor said "if you're going to break a bone, this is a good one to break because it heals quickly in children" and that "in a month or so, she'll feel like nothing ever happened".

As for tonight, she is definitely feeling like something happened but I don't know what's worse; the pain, or the realization that she will not be playing basketball for the rest of the city rec season, practicing piano (at least with her left hand) or ice skating at Mahoney this year.

On another note, Gemma is insanely jealous of all the extra attention Gracie is getting today and has been heard walking around saying, "This is not fair! I want to break my arm!!"