The Broken Arm

On Tuesday night, (her birthday) Payton was all ready to go to dance. She was dancing around the room and put her leg up on the couch. She just fell backwards and landed on her wrist. I didn't see it, so I just hear screaming. I ran to her and she is holding her arm saying, "I need an ambulance, I need an ambulance!"

I tried to calm her down, but she was hyperventilating, could barely breathe or talk! I finally got her to calm down, and looked at her arm, and it looked fine to me. She didn't go to dance and I just had her lay on the couch with ice on her arm. She promptly fell asleep, which almost never happens, and in my mind I am thinking, if you can go to sleep you must not be in that much pain.

Nate came home. She was still pretty upset, but seemed fine. Again, her arm looked fine. It didn't swell up, get red or black and blue. I am telling you it looked fine. For the record, I am the kids of mom that always takes my kids to the doctor. Payton has been x-rayed twice before with nothing wrong with her, but Nate said she seemed fine, so I agreed to look at it in the morning and see how she slept.

Well, she slept through the night and wanted to go to school, so I wrapped it up in an ace bandage and sent her to school!

She came home, seemed fine. She said it hurt a little but not to bad. We just figured it was sprained and decided not to worry. Nate took Owen to soccer practice and I took Payton to Pack Night with me. I had wrapped it up again in an ace bandage, so people at church were asking what had happened. Immediately you start to hear all the horror stories. One friend told me about her some and how he had broken his arm and they had waited like a week and then he had to have surgery, but she also said that he had done the same thing, he had fallen right to sleep after he got hurt. Her doctor had told her that it is because they almost got into shock.

Great, I thought Payton was in so much pain, she went into shock!

As I watched her that night, I just noticed she wasn't using her arm and was holding it out kind of funny. That was it, we left early, I called Nate to tell him we were on our way to urgent care.

He still thought she was fine, but I just needed to be sure!

Well....

Here she is the next day... after looking at the x-rays it was very obvious that she had a buckle fracture in, not just one, but both bones in her arm!
The Dr. at the urgent care wrapped her up until we could get in to the orthopedic surgeon.

Before...

After!

She was able to pick out a pink cast and they even put sparkles on it for her!

The silver lining!

Payton has a terrible thumb sucking habit and the more we have tried to stop her the worse it has gotten. Well, she is 6 now and we are over it. Her broken arm thankfully is her left, which also happens to be the thumb she sucks. Always and only her left thumb! Well, as they were casting her arm I asked the doctor if they would completely cover her thumb so that she could not suck it. They all laughed, but were very kind to oblige! You cannot tell, but her thumb is covered and guess what, I have heard no complaints and there has been obviously no thumb sucking! She has to have this cast on for four weeks, plenty longer than they 21 days it supposedly takes to break a habit! I told her that when she gets her cast off, if she really has truly broken her thumb sucking habit and does not do it ever again... she can go to Toysrus and pick out whatever she wants!! I am really crossing my fingers this works!