Renee

Renee, I just saw your comment on my “about me” page.  Wow!  You know, I have to say, in all this time I’ve never met another parent whose child was in the cast past 8 weeks like our son was.  I know it’s generally tied to the age of the child so maybe it’s just more common for 2 and 3 year olds to break their leg?  I don’t know.

April 20th…I was just doing the math in my head – less than a week!  I’m sure you can hardly wait at this point.  I think probably the most appropriate piece of advice I could give is probably just to manage expectations for everyone.  Actually, more for the parents than your son.

In our case at least, I had all these ideas of how the day was going to go and I built it up to be the best day ever.  Don’t get me wrong – I was so very grateful to have him out of the cast.  But the journey to walking, and then running, and eventually jumping – it was weeks.

Time and space help so much.  I was telling someone on Sunday what a difference it was for me from a year ago Easter.  For some reason, just seeing him miss everything related to that week was just especially difficult for me.  This year, nothing extra special happened but in a way, I was glad it was an “usual” holiday because that gave me the ability to not be in a valley or on a mountain.  But instead, just be able to look both to the past and see everything that we had a year later.  And I think it was probably oneof the most meaningful Easter holidays I’ve ever had as a result of where we were a year ago.

Here’s a story from just last night.  Our son is going through a growth spurt right now (yay!  love those!) and when he does that, he tends to not sleep well.  It was 3am this morning and suddenly the lights in our bedroom flipped on.

There was our 5-year old, standing on top of the dresser where he had climbed up onto in the dark so he could turn on our lights.  I heard myself telling him to get down or he’d break his leg falling.  I hope I stop saying that sooner rather than later! 

Wishing you all the best next week, and I hope you have a smooth transition.

1 year later

It’s really been 13 months, but I think this picture says a lot. One thing in particular our son gained, when he lost use of his leg, was strength in his upper body.

Crawling around in a spica cast for over 2 months will do that. He was active in gymnastics before the break, and was eager to get back to it. We never discouraged his activity and as it turns out, he really built a lot of upper body strength from having the cast.

I took this photo today at the park – March 16th. Exactly 13 months after he had the cast put on. He can do a handstand, cartwheel, obviously the rings as well.

Tickling doesn’t stand a chance of him losing his grip and in fact, his core muscles are stronger than ever. So there really was something good that came out of the ordeal!

Owen

I added a link to Life with Owen to the right – he broke his leg on November 3rd.

Sally

Sally wrote:

Thank you for posting your story. We are in week 4 of our nightmare. He is having horrible muscle spasms at night. They suspect electrolite imbalance is causing the spasms. The electrolite imbalance was caused by the enemas he had after getting impacted. He got impacted because of the pain meds. When his stomach distended from constipation, the cast was too tight & caused his intestines to shut down. They had to cut it off & recast him. His neck was out from the casting table & we had to take him to a chiropractor because he was in severe pain in his neck, but one adjustment & it was totally resolved. So we are still dealing with GI problems & he has to take laxitives to go & still has horrible muscle spasms. We get 4 week xrays tomorrow. Dr says if he sees enough new bone he will remove it at 4 weeks. He is 3 & his break isn’t as severe as your 4 year old’s was, so we are hoping for the best. He has both legs completely cast to the toes. We can’t deal with 2 more weeks of this. We are really at the end of our rope with the stress & all his suffering. Did I mention we have a baby who is 3 months old!

Oh my gosh Sally.  I am so sorry; that is really an ordeal.  We had a hard enough time with the nightmares; the muscle spasms and everything related sounds like a pretty rough go of it.  I remember counting down weeks when we started, but I have to admit by the time we got down to 2 weeks or week and a half, I started counting down by days instead.

Do you have some outside help?  Most of the time I didn’t want to leave him anywhere, with anyone, but I did have moments where it helped to either leave him with my husband and go for a walk for a while, or to ask a friend so that I could take our daughter for some alone time.

Garcias

I added in a link to the right for the Garcias, whose son broke his leg on October 9th.

Interior Monologue

I added a link to Interior Monologue’s blog; their son broke his leg.

Mosholders

I added a link to the right for the Mosholders blog; their son broke his leg September 30th.

Houston broken bones

First of all, Corine sorry for taking so long to respond.  I live in Houston and while we still have no electricity, etc. at our house I do finally have a generator that has allowed me to get back online.  I’m so glad to hear the blog has been some help; that’s nice to hear it’s doing what I intended.

I saw an article just a moment ago on the Houston Chronicle about effects of Ike: 

CHILD INJURIES INCREASE

They survived Hurricane Ike’s powerful winds and torrents of rain, but now dozens of Houston-area children are landing in emergency rooms with broken bones, skull fractures and other preventable injuries.

Doctors are warning parents preoccupied with fixing their homes and obtaining food to pay closer attention to their children.

Since Ike, emergency room visits at Texas Children’s Hospital have increased by as much as 30 percent, said Dr. Paul Sirbaugh, an attending physician.

Sirbaugh said children are climbing trees and falling, getting hit by cars and breaking bones.

“My big fear,” he said, “is that this is something perhaps overlooked in the community. I want to remind parents that their houses and electricity are very, very important, but they need to do their best to keep an eye on their 4-year-olds and their older children.”

Sirbaugh encouraged schools to reopen as soon as possible.

“I would put a call out. We need to get these kids back in school,” he said. “Parents are so distracted at home.”

Memorial Hermann Children’s Hospital also reported an increase in child injuries similar to that seen during the summer holidays.

The Savage family

I added a link to the right to the Savage family’s blog whose son broke his leg September 8th.

Five

I added a link to the right for “And Now There are Five” – their daughter broke her leg.