Hattie's broken leg

On August 25 (Kurt's birthday), Hattie and her cousins were out jumping on the trampoline.  Apparently she got bounced really high and came down hard, but landed on her feet.  She immediately started crying and was carried in to me and Kurt.  We decided to wait until morning to see if she felt better.  That night was ROUGH.  Poor girl.  We took her to the doctor the next day, but they didn't find anything wrong.  The pushed, pulled, squeezed, and rotated her leg and she didn't make a peep.  Not an 'ouch', no crying, nothing.  When the doctor asked if this or that hurt, she wouldn't respond.  But she still refused to walk.  He told us to come back in a few days if she still wasn't walking.

We went back a few days later.  A new doctor this time (it was Saturday so we went to Instacare) but he did all the same things with the same result- Hattie didn't react.  But she still wouldn't walk so he decided we should go down for an x-ray.  And good thing we did- Hattie had a buckle fracture to her right tibia:

See that indent on the right side of her bone (opposite the arrow)?  That's the fracture.  It's a very common break in young kids apparently since their bones are still rather elastic (compared to adults).  They put a splint on her and scheduled an appointment with the orthopedic doctor for Monday.

We had another really rough night (the splint kept slipping and was not comfortable) but she was feeling better on Sunday so we ventured to Grandma Honey's for Roth family dinner (no, we're not Roths but they include us anyways).  She started moving around, rolling, scooting, and crawling and had fun drawing with the chalk.

On Monday we went to the orthopedist and Hattie got her first cast on!  To our great surprise she chose purple over pink:

This is one of my most favorite pictures of all time.  She is TOO CUTE!  While in the purple cast she started walking and then even running all over the place.  She hardly slowed down at all.  She felt tons better after a couple days in the cast and started sleeping through the night.  Thank goodness!

After two weeks the purple cast was removed and a new one put on.  She chose pink this time.  The x-ray showed the bone was healing nicely.

Little stinker would only make silly faces for the camera!

After another two weeks in the pink cast she got the boot put on.  Her leg was 99% healed at this point (after only 4 weeks!) but since you can't tell a toddler to take it easy they put her in a walking boot to protect the bone and slow her down a bit.  It really did only slow her down a bit.  She did not like the boot at first- she was afraid to bend her leg.  But after a day she was back to running around being her crazy self.

She wore the boot for one month.  It was nice that we could take it off to give her a proper bath and she was able to remove it at night while she slept as well.  The problem was she never wanted to put it back on!  Oh well, we got through it.  The day she got the boot officially of I forgot to bring her other shoe!  Hattie wasn't too concerned about it.

Initially I was annoyed that this happened- really?  Hattie has to break her leg just weeks after Henry died?  But then I realized it wasn't so bad.  We had been through much worse.  And I learned that having a crying child is less concerning than having one who can't cry at all.  In the hospital we could hear other kids crying on occasion.  At first I felt sad, but then I thought they were the lucky ones.  They were still able to cry, still present enough to know they were in pain, they were still fighting to live.  Sorry to bring you down, but just remember- when your own child is crying it's, in a way, a good thing.  I'm so glad that Hattie's leg healed so well and isn't causing her any trouble at all (she's been out of the boot for 2 months now).  We have a final follow up appointment in March.  We expect all to be well (knock on wood).