Mercedes and her cast adventure

About a month ago Mercedes was playing with her cousins and sister. I was downstairs chatting it up with my sister-in-law. We heard a BANG! and then a cry. It was Mercedes. She had been getting off of her cousin's bunk bed and slipped and landed on a toy horse (which helped break her fall and thus less damage than it would have been) and then fell to the ground landing on her left arm. Becca immediately wrapped the arm and put ice on it. We tried to figure out if it was just a bad fall, if she had sprained her wrist or arm, or if she had broken it. We gave her Children's Advil. She calmed down we went home and did the evening routine. Her arm was still hurting her but she was wiggling her fingers. So we left it until morning. She slept well not waking once.

Next morning I noticed she was really favoring her arm and not really moving it but instead holding it with her right arm so I decided it was time to go to the doctor. We went to a clinic at 8 a.m. They sent us to get x-rays. That was fun! It took the technician and I about 20 minutes to convince a screaming and hysterical Mercedes that the x-ray would not hurt her. From the x-ray lab they sent us to emerg. We sat there for quite awhile. We hadn't eaten breakfast so all 3 of us (Mercedes, Portia, and I) were very hungry and as we were not expecting to end up in emerg there was nothing to do b/c I had not brought a bag of stuff to entertain the girls. The girls were VERY good in all. I was very impressed with both of them. Portia was very patient...not her most developed attribute. Being such an active and lively girly sitting still and not touching anything is NOT her forte. BUT she did it. A doctor finally came and saw us at around 2 p.m. The verdict was a wrist fracture...an easy heal that would not affect her growth plates. It took all of 10 minutes for her to look at the x-rays and for her to put the cast on Mercedes. It was a pretty cool. It was a half cast so it stopped just before her elbow. She got to pick a colour. Of course, she picked her favorite colour green. It's was a fiberglass so it could get wet. She could bathe with it and swim with it. Wonders never cease. And it had to be on for 3 weeks.

Mercedes did really well. The cast was really itchy. But she rarely complained. She, however, was very embarrassed by the cast and did not want anyone to see her with it on. She kind of went into hiding for 3 weeks unless we forced her out. Her whole class signed it. They made a big deal of her at school over it. It did not really slow her down. She had her first climb on a climbing wall with it, went bowling for the first time, learned to do a flip on the tramp-amp-amp-oline, kept right on climbing trees, and turned 6 years old. She's a wonder that one!

2 days after her birthday on April 29th, the day her cast was to come off, I woke up to voice next to me saying with a giggle "Mommy look! I got my cast off!" Sure enough my clever girl had figured our how to get it off. She had put her arm between her feet and pushed it off with her feet. I was thankful she had not figured that out until that morning. I laughed out loud because I had been quite worried about her getting the cast off. They use a saw that is rather loud and with the freak out at the x-ray machine 3 weeks before I had not figured on a saw going over very well. So, needless to say, I was one thankful mama that there was no need for the saw.

We went in and got her arm x-rayed, sans freak-out this time! Again, the girls were AMAZING!!! I was so proud of the AGAIN! We waited an hour and a half for a five minute check. The staff at the hospital had a good laugh and said that her getting her cast off and HOW she got it off where both firsts! The other kids, who were waiting to get their casts off, looked on with envy. It was quite funny. Her wrist is healing nicely. Just no monkey bars for 10 days. You could see on the x-ray where her wrist had been fractured and where the new parts of the bone had started to grow. The human body is the most amazing creation. God did good!

How thankful we are that it was such a simple and not very inconvenient fix. How thankful we are that we have readily available medical access and care. Even though we waited a few hours...we still got help with minor disruption to our lives. And how thankful we are, that although is hurt like all get out, it could have been so very much worse.