Ari broke his arm at school a couple of weeks ago. I was home, luckily, when the school called to say that he had hurt his arm and that I should come and take him to see a doctor. Evan had the car for a training in Porirua, about 30 minutes away, so Ari and I took a taxi down to the urgent care for an X-ray, and then over to Wellington Hospital where Evan joined us just in time for the laughing gas, resetting of the bones and casting. Here in NZ the cast is just as often called a "plaster" (which is also what band-aids are called) as a cast, but both words are used. The orthopedic resident was a bit too tentative for our liking, so it was hard to get a solid read on whether he wanted us to have him try to set it with traction, using only laughing gas for pain relief, or whether he thought we should just try for surgery. We opted for the former, and he did consult with the senior resident after Ari's arm had been re-X-rayed after the cast, and he apparently thought it almost certain that the bones had been put back into proper place and would heal without surgery, although we'd have to wait a week for a confirming X-ray to be sure.
Ari was a trooper and it was funny to see him on the laughing gas. Like watching your kid get drunk for the first time. At one point he said "Dad, there are 13 of you." He mostly giggled and laughed at what we said, and we had to keep reminding him to continue breathing the gas until the whole procedure was over. Here he is that first night, still in his hospital shirt, showing his lion his cast.
And then some time in the first couple of days, looking a little worse for wear . . .
And the cast getting its first decorations from mom and dad --
Thankfully, he has now had 2 post-break X-rays, each a week apart, and so far things look really good. It's possible he'll get the cast off on Christmas Eve, which will be 5 weeks from the break. If not, our Christmas trip to the beach, where we're spending 4 days, will be much more of a hassle. Guess we'll look at it while playing indoors. Can you imagine trying to keep a 5 year old from getting sand in his cast?
We managed to get the cast wet while giving him a shower (his second casted shower, but somehow we got the tape all wrong that time I guess), so just over a week after he got the cast, when it had all been nicely decorated by his friends at school, he had to have it reinforced with fiberglass. I have to say the red does look nicer than the plaster, but poor kid - it has added extra weight to the whole thing. Even so, he never complains about it, and we've only had one short episode of unhappiness from itching in two and a half weeks, so all is going well. Here is his lovely red appendage. It hasn't slowed him down that much -- he's still climbing on things and being his usual happy self.
Unfortunately,
Mom is not her usual happy self, due to something very wrong with my right foot. Pop! it went, a week after Ari broke his arm. Suddenly, the ball of my foot was distended, I couldn't put weight on it, and a large portion of my upper-mid foot began turning blue, purple and green as some apparent internal bleed began sending the blood around to places where it wasn't supposed to be. We still don't know exactly what's wrong with it, as X-ray and ultrasound did not show a problem (the practice of medicine is so weird -- you have the radiologist reading the ultrasound outside the exam room saying "it's totally normal" when if you looked at my bruised and swollen foot inside the exam room, you could see clearly that that's not the case. However, that's not what the radiologist does - they look at pictures, not people). So I am waiting on an MRI, which I'll have next week. That's a downside to government-provided medical care -- it takes much longer and more doing to get an MRI. At home, I would likely have had an MRI within 2-3 days. Although I don't like the result in my case, I still think that overall it's probably a good thing -- keeping costs down and making sure that expensive diagnostic tests are really indicated when there could be less expensive alternatives is something we could learn about back home.
So walks and hiking are out, and I am trying not to walk more than I have to. Easier said than done. I am guessing it's something structural that's been building up for a long time - it's just weird that there was some kind of sudden rupture, but whatever happened, the long-term problem needs to be fixed. I'm having a temporary orthotic made, and then in a few weeks, when things are more under control with swelling, etc., then I will get a nice, spendy new orthotic. It seems I'll also need to re-train myself to walk by really thinking about pushing off with my big toe and second toe as I roll forward, and not the outside of my foot. This will probably also require some strengthening of various hip and pelvic muscles and especially my adductor muscles. Being too flexible has not been holding me in good stead all these years, as my legs bow out from the hip slightly, but just enough that I am not weighting the right part of my foot. Having a second metatarsal that is longer than my first is also problematic, as this is always the last thing to leave the ground on each step, and so takes the entire load of my weight all by itself for a fraction of a second. Add to that that the fat pads in the ball of your foot are reduced by about half by the time you reach 40, and that's a recipe for a "dropped" metatarsal or other problems with the metatarsal arch, which seems to be what's ailing me.
I had vowed not to make this blog a boring diary, so I'll have to stop with these few thoughts:
1) boy, do we take our feet for granted
2) orthopedists in NZ aren't any less of the obnoxious, macho type than they are at home (and in the UK according to a Brit doctor friend). I had such a bad experience with the first one I saw that I had to call the clinic and ask that Ari never see him during the course of this broken arm saga
3) it is really hard to keep water off specific parts of your body using plastic bags and tape. I have failed twice to make a waterproof seal for my foot now, and we failed once with Ari (although I think we now have his scheme down).
4) I am not a very good invalid. I should work harder at this and just lie around with ice on my foot and read books.
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