So, you might have noticed in the aquarium photos that Kyrie has a cast on her arm. This is her first broken bone: a compression fracture on her radius. A few weeks ago, she fell while running up the steps on an indoor playground structures. Looking back, I should have known right away from the way that she was crying that her arm was broken, but she could move her fingers and there was no swelling, bruising or noticeable protrusions. At the time, I looked at the other mom whom I was with and said, "tomorrow, I am going to be at urgent care because her arm will be broken." True to my word, the next evening I took Kyrie to the Children's Hospital urgent care where she was diagnosed with a broken arm.
She had spent most of the day not using the arm, but said that it didn't really hurt (though it was tender to touch). I told her that she wouldn't participate in tennis or gymnastics, though she thought she might be able to do a little. When she accidentally used her arm and fell to pieces, I knew that something was wrong and took her to urgent care. The nurse said that she felt a protrusion almost immediately, and the x-ray confirmed that there were two tiny cracks in the radius near her wrist. She cried & cried when she found out because they were putting her in a traditional cast, which meant no swimming (among other things). We were scheduled to return to orthopedics in one week for reevaluation.
That first week in the long-arm cast was fairly difficult. Kyrie's arm movement was really restricted and she needed help with everything from getting dressed to buckling her seatbelt. I adjusted all her school work so that she had stickers with words and numbers to answer questions on worksheets. We had to cancel some of her regular activities for the duration, and she sat out of part or all of other activities. She also had a lot of itchiness. The hardest one for her to miss was the swimming half of her regular gym & swim class.
Thankfully, when we returned to ortho, they cleared her for a short-arm cast and agreed to our request for a water-proof cast. That evening, she had a bath almost first thing... and was happily splashing in the pool a few days later. She has a lot more mobility with the short-arm cast and hasn't complained about any itchiness at all. She will go back to ortho in mid-November to have the cast removed.
