Another day spent at HSS...but not for me!

Being the mother of 2 sort of crazy kids, I count my blessings that we have never had a serious injury or required stitches, though we have been close on more than one occasion. About a month ago, my nanny mentioned that she thought Jk hurt his arm in the tub. When I asked him, he said he had a booboo but L had done it. He seemed to be alright, playing, climbing, jumping, throwing himself off of the couch etc. IT really only seemed to bother him if you touched his elbow and if you got him dressed too quickly. So I have been careful getting him dressed and sort of been keeping an eye on it.

Last week my nanny got mad at me and said the arm is not better and I have to take him to the doctor. So I did. First, I made an appointment with someone who I thought was a great pediatric OS and have even had friends use, but he did not take our insurance. I made the appointment anyway (the consultation fee was $350) but J freaked out and demanded I find someone in network. His rational was that we don't even know if anything is wrong, figure it out first and if there is really a problem, we can explore other doctors. Fine. So I found someone.

We went on Thursday. He found that Jk couldn't really extend his elbow all the way and said it was either fractured or he had a subluxed radius (nursemaids elbow). So off to x-ray we went. What was nice was that it was a whole pediatric floor, so the x-ray tech dealt only with kids, the nurses dealt only with kids, and there was even a nice lady handing out snacks for all the kids. It made me feel better about having switched to this OS.

Jk was so good during the xrays, he sat nicely and put his hand where it needed to go, and he was rewarded with tons of stickers! He couldn't have been happier. As soon as we got back to the doctor's office (right down the hall) he came in to look at the x-rays, and lo and behold, a fracture.

Shit. What kind of mother am I, my kid has a broken arm and I had no idea. He said it was too late to cast it, but he is pretty sure the olecranon (proximal end of the ulna) is fractured, as is evidenced by new bone growing and some soft tissue swelling, and Jk needs PT. The mechanism of injury must have been him landing on or hitting his elbow on something. Obviously this is most likely. If he is not better in a few weeks he will need an MRI, which becomes a huge ordeal because he needs to be put to sleep.

I wasn't quite sure what to do about the PT thing. He needs the kind of PT I do, and that we do in my office (orthopaedic) but we don't generally treat kids that little. I have a lot of friends who are pediatric PTs but they treat mostly developmental delays and torticollis, and they don't take private cases. We have one pediatric PT in my office but I was not even sure what she treated. So I frantically called her and she assured me that she would love to treat Jk and she has done this a lot, and that it is a very common injury.

So he has his first PT session on Tuesday. I also have an OB appointment that day, and he has a special enrichment program at school for Thanksgiving. I see the next few weeks looking something like that, running around from PT appointments, to OB appointments, to swim lessons, to OS appointments!

Never a dull moment here!