Since this summer marked the first time anybody in our family has broken a bone, I thought we'd have several more years before we experienced our second. Instead, we had broken bones bookending our summer.
The evening of Saturday, August 25, our family went to the public library. Rebekah was participating in her first-ever teen summer reading auction. I had assumed the rest of us could hang out in the library while Bekah spent her hard-earned book bucks on the library's lawn. Instead, we found that the library closes at 6 on Saturdays. We considered what to do: Artitorium? Closed at 5. Art Museum of Eastern Idaho? Closed at 5. Museum of Idaho? Closed at 5. So we walked down the road to the nearby playground.
I helped Miriam and Winnie across the monkey bars one time, and then Analee and Miriam asked if they could look at the river. I sat down on a nearby bench to keep an eye on my three girls and the other playground patrons.
While I had my eyes elsewhere, Winnie decided to try the monkey bars again without my help. She made it about three rungs in when she couldn't go any farther and let go.
It was a 6-foot drop, and when she put her left hand out to brace her fall, she fractured her wrist.
She hit the ground and was quiet for a fraction of a second. Then she started screaming and crying. I ran over to her thinking she had had the wind knocked out of her. But when she continued to scream, I asked her if something hurt. "My wrist!" she cried.
At that point I was sure she had at least sprained it. I texted Seth to let him and Bekah know that we would need to take Winnie to an urgent care facility and carried her back to the library with Analee and Miriam in tow.
We stayed at the library long enough for Rebekah to win a quadcopter and buy a few more things with her remaining book bucks, then Seth drove us to the doctor. He took the other girls home and met us right after Winnie's x-ray confirmed my suspicions.
Picture taken on our way to the playground. The girls asked to pose on the rock.
A sad, sad, Winnie waiting in the exam room. Not only did she break her wrist, but a mosquito bit her on the forehead while I was carrying her back to the library.
Little girl by the big x-ray machine.
The phenomenal nurse wrapping Winnie's splint.
Winnie splinted up.
The doctor at the urgent care facility told us to have her wear the splint for 4-5 days and then get it casted. I tried to schedule an appointment with our pediatrician to get a cast, but they said they don't do that. So I took her back in to the urgent care facility on Thursday, August 31. The doctor there took off the splint, then left to look at her x-ray. When he saw that the fracture involved her Salter-Harris growth plate, he told us she'd need to see an orthopedist. He put the cast on anyway, and I scheduled an appointment for the next day.
The orthopedist looked at her cast and the x-ray and told us we may have to get a new cast if this one proves too loose. (He said they prefer to keep them splinted for a week before getting a cast because the area around the fracture swells.) Otherwise, she'll get her cast off in three weeks.
Winnie with her new cast. She wanted pink, but the urgent care facility only had white. If we had gone to the orthopedist to get her cast, she could have chosen pink. Maybe next time.
