Casting Call

Friday Harris fell off of Mac's bed and broke his arm. It was one of those moments- I was standing right beside him but he flipped off so quickly I hardly had time to react. He has buckle fractures in the radius and ulna, very common breaks in young children. The bone is still pliant so it doesn't break clean through, it just sort of "buckles" from the impact. The fractures are in his wrist area but they had to cast all the way up his arm because babies tend to "pull Houdinis" -you go in to get them out of bed and the cast is laying there beside them, empty.

Here is Harry with Vince, the wonderful Corpsman that put the cast on with such skill and gentleness. Harris did not make a peep the whole time, and sat perfectly still. There was a 3 year old boy in the next bed who howled and wailed the whole time his foot was being casted. Vince and I laughed and he said, " I think I got the long end of the stick" as his colleague was struggling to work with the boy, and as Harry sat quiet and still. Vince put Harris in his top 5 best patients of all time! The x-ray guy said Harris was his best child patient ever. I think Harris was sort of mesmerized and really interested in what all these people were doing to him. He didn't mind the attention either! (In the picture above he was watching a man with an awful looking broken foot in the bed next to him. It gave me the shivers.)

Harris romps around just like usual. The cast is on his thumb-sucking arm, though, which means he has been crying when we lay him down to sleep and also not sleeping as long in the mornings. It is sad to me because his thumb sucking was just precious, and obviously great for self-soothing. I wonder if this will break him of it, which would be a good thing long term, I just wasn't ready for it. He is still my baby!

Oh, and the boy is dangerous to himself and others with that arm. He gave me a high five with it and just about broke my hand! He has tripped and fallen and hit his head on the cast- a big forehead owie. Poor guy. He'll only have it for 3 weeks, if everything heals well.