Sayer has a buckle fracture

Yesterday in her dance class (which is half gymnastics) she was playing on the uneven parallel bars with 3-4 other little girls while the instructor took turns with one other over on the balance beam. Sayer was trying to pretend that the higher bar (maybe 3 feet?) was a horse. She had a leg on either side and was holding on, but her dance skirt was slippery and she started to rotate. She threw her right arm out to catch the other bar, and she hit it instead. Right wrist. Ouchie. She hollered and cried and came to sit with me for a while with ice on it. She decided to go back into class to get her turn on the beam, and to sit in closing circle. Then she came back out to sit with me with ice on it for another 20 minutes. When we got home I put a kitchen towel over her wrist, then a bag of frozen peas on one side and a bag of frozen spinach on the other and used a huge rubber band to keep them there. She wore that huge gauntlet for about 40 minutes. She continued to mention that her arm hurt through the evening, even saying that sleeping was going to be uncomfortable because she'd have to sleep on the other arm, when she usually preferred to sleep on her right arm.

This morning she made no complaint about the arm, though she expressed some doubt of her ability to do schoolwork when I handed her a pencil and sat her down at the table with her phonics book. She finished her pages without trouble, and did not really mention the arm hurting any more during the day.

This afternoon we had a make-up dance class, so we went to The Little Gym, and I dropped her off to take Duncan and run an errand. The class started in the gym, then moved into the dance room, rather than the other way around. In the gym they were working on monkey jumps/cartwheels. When Sayer tried, she crumpled over that right wrist.

Sadly, since I'd just activated my new cell phone within the last 10 days or so, I had not yet updated the info at TLG, and they couldn't reach me to tell me Sayer was hurt. It was not a serious hurt, it was just that she was too upset to participate in the class and so she spent the next 40 minutes sitting in the lobby with ice on her wrist waiting for me to return. Sigh. Bad mommy.

When I got there and heard about what had happened and looked at her wrist (which had shown no bruising or swelling or anything from the knock it had taken yesterday) I saw that it was a bit puffy. Not much swelling, but some. So from TLG we headed to the pediatrics office. After a longish wait (they don't take walk-ins, blah blah blah) we saw a doctor who explored her range of motion (almost perfect) and then started with gentle pressure that produced yelps of pain. She suggested ibuprofen for pain and then sent us across the street for X-rays and a splint.

The X-ray tech couldn't see anything, but she's not a radiologist or a doctor. The images were sent back to the doctor and we went to get the splint. The don't have splints for pediatrics patients, so Sayer is now wearing the exact splint that I was given for tendinitis, just cinched a whole lot tighter. We headed out to hit one more errand on the way home.

The doctor called while we were in the store. Called it a 'small buckle fracture' and said that we'd be sent to see a 'bone specialist' at the Santa Clara facility on Monday. I don't know if we'll get a cast or a better fitting splint or what. I will lobby hard against a plaster cast - they have inflatable ones ... Whatever they give us she'll be wearing for probably 3 weeks.

The pain has passed. When we got home I asked Sayer if it was hurting her at all (so that I could give her ibuprofen) and she said no. She had a hard time eating dinner - she's right handed and couldn't hold the fork properly and complained that she couldn't stab the chicken or scoop the rice with her left hand. I know I'm going to hear more of that particular complaint when it's time to do more phonics or history or math or anything that requires holding a pen/pencil/crayon.

Siiiiiiigh.