A Really Broken Arm

On the 15th, the kids and I drove to Snowflake to surprise my mom for her birthday.  We had only been there for about an hour when we heard some serious crying coming from the basement.  I was sure it must be Christian because none of my kids sounded like that.  Well, it was Kelton, and I didn't recognize the cry because he had never been hurt this badly.  We don't know exactly what happened because the only witnesses are four and five years old and it's unclear whether or not they were even in the room.  But, Kelton fell, or flipped, or something, off of the top bunk bed.  At first we thought he jumped off, but he says he didn't.  There is no guardrail, and I'm sure he was playing around and went off somehow.  And, unlike Jade, who broke her arm on Grandma's trampoline just a few weeks prior during the 24th celebration (compliments of Natalie who was trying to help her jump higher), we knew right away that Kelton's arm was broken because it looked like this:

Nate wasn't with us, so Rob, who is a nurse, came with us to hold Kelton's arm while we drove to Show Low to the Emergency Room.  We got in fairly quickly, but all kinds of crazy traumas came into the ER that night; head lacerations, car accidents, two helicopters came in... I was glad we were only there with a broken arm.  We were there from just after 7:00 p.m. until about 12:30 a.m.  Part of the holdup was that we were waiting for the anesthesiologist, who was supposed to be in shortly to do a nerve block (around 8:30 or 9:00?) so the arm could be set, but he got caught up with one of the other traumas in surgery and wouldn't be available until after midnight.  So, they ended up doing conscious sedation to set his arm and had to give him four doses of the medication to get it done.  I asked if that was a lot and they said that it was, especially for someone his size.  The ER doctor who did the reduction (putting the arm back in place) had a background in orthopedics and it appears that he did a good job.

X-ray showing the break.  Kelton told us his arm looked like a duck.

While we were waiting, a nurse or tech brought in this little game for Kelton to play.  It kept him occupied for a long time.  The game had a button you push that sends up air bubbles that shoot up little rings that you try to stack on a post.  Sometimes the rings would get stuck.  Kelton, only having one functional hand, would hit the game on his forehead to try to get the rings unstuck. He would be playing, just like in the picture below, and then out of nowhere... Smack!  Right to the head.  It was so funny.

Between it and the morphine, we were actually getting some smiles while we were waiting for the reduction to take place.  Oh, random side note--Kelton is left handed and was lucky enough to break his right arm.

Back at Grandma and Grandpa's the next day with a splint and sling.

The following Tuesday, I took Kelton to a pediatric orthopedic doctor in Tucson.  They said the x-rays from the hospital that were taken after the reduction looked good, and then put a cast over the existing splint.  Kelton told me he was thinking about choosing blue or green for his cast.  But, when they asked him what color he wanted, he replied with, "yellow!"  And yellow it is.  It's more like hello-electric-you-couldn't-lose-me-at-Disneyland-yellow.  I need to get a picture of it when he has his shoes on because it matches the laces and soles of his gray shoes.

Kelton cracks me up.  He thinks that if we are taking a picture of his arm, he must look sad and pathetic.  On day one or two, sure.  But he wasn't even on any pain meds when I took this picture a week after he broke his arm. 

So Dad came over and pulled out the "DON'T smile" trick.  I love this face:

Seriously, DON'T smile...

Haha, Dad wins!

Really, Kelton is doing great, just like the smiling picture.  My biggest problem is that he is still the little monkey who fell off a bunk bed.  I can't convince him to be careful and not try to balance on spinning chairs or walk along the side bars of the trampoline (because he isn't allowed to actually jump), or run up the slides at the park, etc,. etc,. etc....  We need for this reduction to stay in place!  I keep trying to convince him that he really doesn't want to have to have the doctor re-do it.  We go back on Wednesday to take another x-ray and hopefully get a shorter, waterproof, cast that will only be on for about 3-4 more weeks.  So that this poor little boy can finally play soccer with his team.  Because, of course, soccer season started just days after he broke his arm.