On Sunday morning Mom and Dad left on an anniversary trip. My grandma and I administered Ibuprofen to Josiah every day to try and help the swelling. He didn’t complain about his arm hurting, but he wouldn’t move it very much either. He didn’t want to try rotating it at all.
When Mom and Dad got home Tuesday night, they thought it still looked pretty swollen. So Mom took him to the doctor on Wednesday morning. The doctor ordered an x-ray, and it turned out that he had indeed broken his wrist. The technical explanation says that he had a “non-displaced cortical buckle fracture involving the distal radius.” Basically, when he hit the ground with his hands extended, the bone buckled at the wrist and snapped.
Thankfully, the bones were still aligned so there was no need to adjust them.
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| They kept Josiah in a splint for one day until he could see the orthopedic surgeon who put on the permanent cast. |
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| Josiah was very brave through all of this. He got to be the first one out of all of us to experience a broken bone, getting a cast, etc. |
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| His cast goes up to his shoulder to minimize rotational movement of the arm. He has to wear it for 3 weeks. Then they will do another x-ray and if it is improving quickly enough, they will put him in a half-cast (up to his elbow) for another 3 weeks. |
We share this as a warning to all of you reading: if you think a bone might be broken, you should get it checked! We felt bad that Josiah walked around with a broken arm for 3 days, but a broken bone is not always as obvious as one would think! (And some children apparently have a higher tolerance for pain than others.) We have all learned a valuable lesson. But we’re very thankful that we did catch it before it was too late and that he will hopefully need the cast for only 6 weeks!
6 comments:
We are praying that Josiah's arm will heal quickly. School starts soon. Can he hold a pencil and write with his cast on?
Brian was the first one in our family with a cast. I think he might have been younger than Josiah. He got pretty good at eating spaghetti with his left hand.
Thanks for your prayers, Aunt Debbie! Actually, writing won't be a problem; he's left-handed. So no excuses. :-)
~Bianca
Wow, Amy! I'm impressed to hear that Brian mastered spaghetti-eating with his left hand. It's hard enough for me to eat it with my right hand! :-)
~Bianca
I hope he gets better quickly! My younger brother Josiah was the first one in our family to break a bone too (at least a major bone; hannah cut her finger pretty much off- it was hanging by skin ;P, and I broke my tooth in half, but we those aren't really major bones ;). The funny thing was (ironic..not really funny) that the morning he broke his femur we had said at breakfast "Josiah's going to be the first one in our family to break a bone!" And break a bone he did! A trailer gate fell on his leg and broke the biggest bone in a human body..the femur. Yeah, that was fun. :{ He obviously had high pain tolerance too because he was crying but not really freaking out. It looked bruised but we weren't compleatly sure it was broken 'till we took him to get an X-ray. :)
Anyway..I hope he heals fast!
Joyfully His,
Alexis
That's ironic that the Josiah in your family and the Josiah in our family were both the first to break bones, Alexis! I'll bet breaking a femur is quite painful. It seems like I may have read about that on your blog at some point. I seem to remember seeing a picture of him in a big cast.
~Bianca
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