Olivia's cast

I never really blogged about what happened to Olivia's arm earlier this summer.

It's not really an exciting story; Abbie was playing with her in the bedroom and must have pulled on her arms a little too hard when she was pulling her up.  Olivia came out of the bedroom crying but I didn't pay too much attention to it because she never cries for more than 30 seconds about anything.  However, a few minutes later she was still crying, and not swinging her arm as she was walking around.  Abbie also seemed pretty quiet and worried, so I asked about what happened.  Turns out that Abbie heard a little "pop" noise when she lifted Olivia up.  Thankfully Garrett was home, and he said that it was probably "nursemaid's elbow", meaning that her elbow popped out of place and just needed to pop back in.  He fixed it once as an intern (4 years ago), so first he brushed up on his knowledge about it (thanks, YouTube - ha!).

Just as Garrett was about to manipulate her arm back, there was a knock at the door.  It was our neighbors asking if we wanted to go for a walk, and thankfully the wife was a current intern!  Unfortunately though, she also hadn't ever really fixed nursemaid's elbow, but it was really nice to have HER hold Olivia so I didn't have to.

Garrett did a few manipulations but Olivia didn't stop whimpering.  Normally if it's nursemaid's elbow, the kid is fine immediately after the elbow is put back into place.  We called a few friends who live in our neighborhood (a pediatrician, and a physician's assistant), and they both recommended we take her in to get looked at.

Garrett took her to the pediatric ER (pretty much the best thing EVER - you call ahead and they are ready for you when you show up, plus we only have to pay the $25 copay instead of a normal ER visit).  They sent him home, though, and said to come back the next day if she was still in pain.

The first thing I heard Olivia say the next morning when she woke up was "ow! ow! ow!" Poor little thing.  I took her to get some x-rays.  Thankfully Garrett knew when we were there so he had one of his colleagues pull up the film and read it right away, and he texted me with the results before we even left the x-ray room.  No break, but there might have been a fracture that couldn't be detected.  They told me to take her to her pediatrician to see what she recommended.  I'm still not really sure why we had to do this, I don't remember... seemed like an unnecessary step but I really don't want to be one of "those" people.

The pediatrician told us the results of the x-rays (she didn't know i already knew them), and then she recommended we go to an orthopedist and see what they recommended.

So, back to the hospital ortho center!  They ended up casting it, obviously. Normally they would just splint it, but babies/toddlers don't do well with splints apparently.  They told me to come back in a week for more x-rays.  The whole thing was precautionary anyway, since nothing really showed up on the xray.  Olivia was just in pain though.

A week later, more x-rays.  Nothing was different, so they recommended two more weeks with a cast (they said that after 3 weeks total, anything that could have been wrong would be as good as new, even if we couldn't exactly see if anything was wrong.).  That was frustrating because I would have rather been told 3 weeks from the beginning so I didn't have to bring my 3 kids to the ortho center for 3 hours, plus pay a $30 copay, if they knew they were going to say 2 more weeks anyway!  I also didn't like the second cast that they put on her - it seemed a lot bulkier than the first one.  Oh well.  I really liked her orthopedic surgeon.  Turns out he did his residency in Madison a few years ago and couldn't stop raving about it!  He was really excited that we are moving there.

So anyway, that's the LONG story of Olivia getting her cast.  She did a great job with it and only complained a few times.  She also was VERY aware that she was not allowed to get her cast wet, and every time she saw water she said "cast wet, cast wet!" and backed away.  It also added a bit to the adorable-ness factor, not that she needed it.  It was definitely a conversation-starter with strangers.