Broken femur

Everyone had such insightful, honest, interesting comments on the last post.  I want to respond to them but as you probably noticed, I’ve been away from the computer a bit and that’s because my little girl broke her leg.

I should probably write everything down soon so I don’t forget it (I do daily write ups for both kids with quotes and memorable events and print them out every month because I don’t have time to do anything more elaborate), but here’s me and my niña in the ED just as her meds kicked in.  She had finally stopped crying and Kyle had just arrived to get P and we hadn’t heard the bad news from the MD yet. Hence the smile.  After that it was mostly tears for the day.  I mean, I held it together all right, but definitely had several breakdowns.  It really freaked the kids out the first time I lost it in front of them.  We had already been transferred to UC Davis in Sac (where they have pediatric orthopedics) and one of the doctors came in to discuss the timing of the OR and anesthesia and I burst into tears. I hadn’t put it together yet that she was going to be going under general anesthesia and intubated and WAHHHHH.  My baby!!  Poor kids were more scared of my reaction than anything else.  Anyway, I could write an essay about those 48 hours alone, but suffice it to say, the medical staff was WONDERFUL and I couldn’t have asked for a better team to care for my girl.  Literally from the second I carried her in the Davis ED to the ambulance ride to Sac to the surgery team to the PACU nurses and every little person in between (the transport employee who grabbed her extra juice because it was the only thing she was willing to eat…I could go on and on…), everyone was so loving and caring and did their best to make us all feel at ease with the trauma of the day.

And my friends!  Oh my gosh!  My friends have been INSANELY helpful.  The support and concern and actual help they’ve been providing from the second they found out…wow.  It is making this hard time so much easier. Right away I was getting texts offering to take P off my hands and bring food and activities and babysit and EVERYTHING.  Dear friends, I love you guys so much.

Off to UC Davis!

ED arrival (#2).

P staying occupied thanks to the volunteers and their endless supply of activities – like play doh, dinosaur coloring, sparkly wand, light up toys, etc.  Seriously, I cannot sing their praises enough.  They were the extra help I didn’t know I needed, but definitely did.

And of course the Disney channel.  Because if there’s ever a time to give in on TV and media limits, it’s when your kid’s femur is split down the center.  I actually STILL feel bad about this, but I’m trying to cut myself a break and be practical.  But you guys, we watched SO MUCH TV in the hospital.  And then we were moved up to the pre-op area and they gave her a little portable dvd player thing with Cinderella on and I was like eeeeek inside but let her watch it anyway.  But then she fell asleep 3 minutes in so that was nice.  Poor thing hadn’t slept all day so I just sat there holding her neck and stroking her hair and cheeks and worrying about everything you could imagine under the sun.

She kept having spasms juuust as she was falling asleep which would jerk her awake and cause her leg to fling up and then she would wail out in pain so the anesthesiologist came early and hooked her up with some drugs and then she drifted off to sleep…

And got a whole new accessory!

Post anesthesia toddlers are a real treat I’ll tell you what.  NOT.  Luckily the drugs wore off.  Unluckily the drugs wore off. You catch my drift?

Putting on a brave face.  🙂

This was the next day…after I spent the night on a gurney pushed up next to her.  It was actually not bad.  It wasn’t great, but I was so desensitized by then that I was just happy that she was out of the OR and awake and in one piece. We snuggled a bit, but she was still adjusting to her situation (mostly not comprehending enough to know that she should be upset) and in and out of pain.

Poor thing finally fell asleep JUST as we were free to be discharged.  It worked out though because I had to run and get her prescriptions filled, bring her car seat and other stuff to the car (and FIND THE CAR! — Kyle parked it for me and left me with a ticket), yadda yadda.  She didn’t let me leave the room AT ALL while she was awake so I finally had a chance to run to the bathroom and splash water on my face.  Yikes.  Not pretty.  And hit up the cafeteria.  I didn’t have time to eat said food, but at least I had something when I pulled into our garage at long last at 3 pm.  I’ll get back to that in a sec.  While she was sleeping, the nurses stayed at the doorway with an eye on her…but then we noticed a red part on her skin and it seemed like her cast was too tight so we had to wait an extra hour or so for the team to come by and take a look at it before fixing it.  Everything takes so much longer in hospital time, but she was sleeping through it all so I was just happy she was getting rest.  I was absolutely s t a r v i n g by this point, but such is life.

After wailing for a solid 5 minutes on our way home she just gave in and passed out.  And since she was still out when we got home and I was ready to inhale my own arm, I left the car on, ran inside and grabbed a fork and sat in the air conditioning eating.  She continued to snooze in the back of the car for hours so I just unloaded and got things organized until Kyle and P got home.  They were in Fremont because our lives couldn’t get more complicated or anything…sheesh.  We would have skipped the OIT appointment, but we didn’t know in time to get another week’s worth of doses overnighted to us.  So, alas, we divided and conquered as parents.  With our two different kids at two different hospitals.  Life is crazy.  She actually slept for SO LONG that we had to wake her up because it was getting pretty late. But then we went and bathed and it was heavenly.  Clean and reunited with bunny.  Happy girl.

We took the fourth rail off her crib because lifting her over the rail would break our backs.  Silver lining?  We had been waiting and wondering when we should do this.  After a week of being potty trained I was thinking it was time to give her access to get out to go in the morning or night, but was nervous she’d take advantage of the new found freedom and “explore” all night long instead.  One step forward and two steps back.  Sooo we get an answer to our crib dilemma but with that comes a return to diapers aaaaaaand a spica cast. Sweet.

Anyway, I’ll write more on and off, but this post has taken so long to get out because I have so many other things going on. It’s been hard, and I cried a lot those first few days, but we have been extraordinarily lucky with the amount of help we have gotten from family and friends.

Hey kids, can we please make a pact to have no more ambulance rides?!?!  Please?