The family reunion was a blast!! We had so much fun there...and in Gwen's case, her fun took a bit of a bad turn. We took the kids out to the swings while we waited for the food to cook, and they played on the jungle gym, went down the slide, and had a blast on the swings.
The kids were all on the swings when we told them that we were going to go back into the clubhouse for some appetizers (and mainly, fruit salad). Gwen was so excited about fruit salad that she decided to jump off the swing she was on...while going very fast, and WAY too high up.
I watched the whole thing. Not something a mother wants to watch. It seemed like she took off from the seat of the swing, and decided at the last minute that it wasn't a good idea, and just dropped. She landed right on her elbow, and immediately started crying. I just knew it was broken, but she stopped crying pretty quickly, so we decided to put an ice pack on it and wait. My mother in law wrapped an ice pack in a dish towel, and made a make shift sling out of Genni's nap blanket, and Gwen seemed to do fine the rest of the reunion.
It wasn't until we went back to his Grandma Fletcher's house that his aunt (who's a nurse) had a chance to really look at it and the decision was made to take her to urgent care.
When we got back into the exam room, they had us unwrap the sling so Gwen could have X-ray's done. Gwen was pretty excited about that.
A nice close up of her arm. It was pretty swollen.
They took the X-rays, then splinted her arm and put it in a sling again. The attending doctor had never dealt with a child's broken elbow, and wasn't too sure what she was seeing on the X-ray. The radiologist was out for the day, so we were told we would have to wait 1-2 days to get the results. Once Gwen's arm was stabilized better in the splint, she seemed to really cheer up and go back to normal (though giving her a bath that night was interesting as we couldn't get the splint wet).
The following day we said our goodbyes to Rob's mom, brother, and those relatives that were still around (we said goodbyes to the others the night before), and started our drive to Pittsburgh, PA to see my grandparents. A few hours into our drive, I received a phone call from a New York number.
Giving me the results of what I already suspected/knew.
Gwen's elbow was fractured, and she would need a cast.
So the first thing we did on Monday morning was get an excellent recommendation for a pediatric orthopedic doctor from my cousin, got Gwen an appointment within an hour after we called, and took her in to be seen. You can see the lovely bruising on her elbow...
...and compared to her right arm, you can see just how swollen her upper arm and all around her elbow was.
They repeated the X-rays, and casted her, then sent her to get an MRI done the next day because the X-rays were showing something odd around her elbow. They thought a piece of bone was hanging off her elbow, and prepared us for the best and worse case scenarios. Gwen was just super proud of her light blue cast (her favorite color) and super excited to have all my relatives sign it that night at the family get together.
The MRI ended up showing that what looked like a piece of bone hanging off her elbow was actually the break in her bone. The X-rays were just picking up the break at a weird angle. If you picture the end of a bone, where it looks like there's two rounded lumps on the bottom, one of those at the elbow of her upper arm was fractured half way through. Thankfully, the gap between the break and the main bone was so small that Gwen didn't need to have surgery to correct it, and was able to let the bone grow over that space and connect it all together again.
Before we left Pittsburgh, she had her light blue cast removed and X-ray's done again to see if it was healing ok, and a dark blue one put back on. She had a cast for about a month (counting the light blue one), then X-rays again in Abilene, then a splint for about 2 weeks, X-rays once more and was then freed from all casts and healing splints for good.
Gwen had a long hard road from there though. Because of the way it broke, and the type of cast she had on, her muscles freezed up, and wouldn't bend much. Her arm was pretty much stuck in the same shape you see in the cast pictures. She started with a basic physical therapist the second week in August, and after two weeks, was switched to a specialist in hand and arm therapies.
She worked really hard-she saw her wonderful therapist twice a week, went back to the doctor every 2-4 weeks, did exercises at home, and used stretching splints designed to make her muscles stretch and pull and loosen up (the splints helped straighten her arm back to a 0 degree angle, and help her bend her arm so she could touch her shoulder and back of her neck again). Finally, a few days before Thanksgiving, she was given the all clear.
My sweet Gwen went through so much, but had such a good attitude (and even excitement-guess that's part of being a kid!). What a big adventure and tons of great (and not so great) memories for her-I am so proud of all her hard work!!
