My brave baby girl broke her arm yesterday! Sarah (5) came and got me and said, "Mom, Gracie is crying, she was doing a somersault and I heard her arm pop!" Well, that did get me up, but, can I just tell you how many times a day I am told someone is hurt? So although I knew enough to move immediately with the description she gave, I was still skeptical that we had a real injury on our hands.
As I approached her and saw her sitting cross-legged with her arm resting on her lap and kind of a dazed, whimpering expression on her face, I looked at her arm and didn't even get up close to her before I KNEW it was broken. It was so obvious, there was a bend in the forearm!
I just kept telling myself to be calm and not panic. I am so thankful for that brave little girl who did not cry or get hysterical, because that is what kept me from crying and being hysterical. Two wonderful neighbors came over and we taped her arm with packaging tape to a small cutting board, pumped her with tylenol and put a bag of crushed ice right on the bare arm (and kept it there all the way to the hospital, when we got there her arm was so numb we could have cut it off with a butter knife!)
We went right to Children's hospital, which I am so glad we did because the radial bone was broken clear through and at an angle and she needed to be sedated to have it set in place.
Most know Grace's favorite color in the world is orange and she kept saying she wanted an orange cast, but unfortunately that must not be a popular color because it wasn't a choice, so she went with Red. We told her it is a reddish orange. :)
She will have the full arm cast for a month, and then a short cast for another couple weeks after that. Right now her biggest distress is that she sucks her thumb on her right hand. It is her comfort position to have her thumb and snuggle bunny up by her face, and she is very sad that she cannot get her hand to her face with her full arm cast.
Some may think, cool, it will break her of that habit. Maybe if she was my first born I'd be humiliated that my almost 4 year old still sucks her thumb, but she is my baby, and I really don't care if she sucks her thumb until her wedding day! She is uncomfortable and she can't comfort herself in her usual way and it makes me sad! :(
I have been so proud of her. She is the bravest, strongest little girl, and it helped me to not give in to panic. She barely cried and was calm through the whole thing yesterday and, although her equilibrium is off with the big cast, and she cannot dress herself or go to the bathroom by herself like she is used to, she is such a trooper. Kids are so resiliant!
I love my little Goo! She is my hero!
So cute. She is a keeper. By the time the cast comes off I am sure she will be doing everything independently with the cast. Did I ever tell you John broke his femer when he was 4? His mom always jokes about him running around the house with the cast and that he actually broke it off he was so active. A 4th child never has time to sit back and relax. :)
ReplyDeletePoor thing! But, what a brave big girl! I'm always afraid something like that will happen to one of mine.
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