Popsicle Stick Arms

Monday afternoon, Elle and I had just finished lunch, and I was about to make my 3rd attempt at doing the dishes when the school called. The woman on the phone told me that Mindy fell off the monkey bars, and my thoughts immediately jumped to: “broken arm,” but then she was saying that she hit her head and that I needed to come check on her so I got even more worried. I told her I’d be right down. The dishes would have to wait. Again.

When I got there they said that Mindy was really upset and that she’d been crying the whole time. I went in and found her on the little cot in the back of the office, covered in tears. I looked at her head and could see where she’d hit it, right on top, but it wasn’t really bleeding. She said her head hurt and her arms hurt and hurt chest hurt so I helped her to the car and took her home.

When we got home, I was thinking, “She’s pretty hurt,” but I always tend to want to wait a little while to make sure it’s really bad before taking her to the doctor. Pete, on the other hand, was like, “You need to take her to the ER.” I really didn’t want to go to the ER so I called our Pediatrician at The Bryner Clinic (thanks for the reference, Somer, I love those guys!) to see if we could get her in there. I knew it would be a lot cheaper and just a much better experience overall if we could do that, and they told me to bring her right in!

Back in the car, and we were in seeing the doctor within probably half an hour. So nice.

The doctor checked her head and eyes and chest and said that all looked ok. The skull wasn’t cracked or anything like that, just a big goose egg. By now, Mindy was mostly complaining about her arms, especially her left arm so we shifted focus to that.

They have their own Radiology center so they just took her back and did the x-ray, and we really didn’t have to wait too long before we knew the verdict. Turns out she’s got TWO broken arms! Poor girl! But, the good news is that all the breaks (1 in the right arm, and 2 or 3 in the left arm) are buckle fractures. I had never heard of that before.

This is NOT Mindy’s arm, but it looked a lot like this, just a little bump on the bone.


It's also called an incomplete fracture, and it should heal a lot quicker than a regular fracture would (maybe 3-4 weeks). We will go in to a specialist next week to find out if she needs a cast or 2, and how long she'll need them and everything. For now she's just got splints on her arms



It's pretty hard for her to do anything. She can't write and it's hard for her to feed herself.

Seeing her with these splints on her arms, brings back memories of when she had splints on her arms (aka "popsicle-stick arms") 7-years ago:


Mindy was born with a cleft pallet (instead of that hangy down thing in the back of her throat, she had a hole), and when she was 11 mos. old, she had surgery to fix it. Nothing was actually wrong with her arms, but they put the splints on so she wouldn’t stick anything in her mouth and mess it up.



She was so cute and little and sad walking around with her arms sticking out like that! It’s amazing how well kids adapt, though. After a few days, she was playing around like normal. Well as normal as she could without bending her arms. :)


(Notice she's got exactly the same look on her face as the above sad picture.)

Yesterday, I took her to school, but I hadn't timed the pain medication very well and started worrying about her after a few hours. I went in to check on her and give her some Motrin, and she started crying as soon as she saw me and wanted to go home. I took her home and she rested for the rest of the day. On the bright side she finished the final Harry Potter book, and she's really excited for the movie to come out. :)

Today I made sure to time her meds better before dropping her off at school, and when I went back to check on her and give her more, she seemed fine and was totally ready to face the rest of the day! We'll see if she's up for ballet tonight though...