Healing

Today was Peyton's follow up appointment with the Orthopedist after discovering she had multiple fractures resulting from extremely brittle bones.  Ron was going to come home from work to accompany Peyton, myself and the home nurse.  The nurse, however, suggested medical transport since Peyton needs to be on oxygen and we don't really have any oxygen tanks at home to take with us.  That's kind of a problem! She got it all set up and we took an ambulance to the appointment.  I did, however, sent texts to a couple of my neighbors telling them not to freak out if they saw an ambulance show up at our doorstep!  It was an extremely convenient way to make this trip today.

Once at MUSC, I checked in at Orthopedics.  We were then sent down the hall to x-ray.  They were able to do everything with her still on the stretcher she came in on, so that made things very easy.  They x-rayed her left arm and right leg.  The x-rays below are kind of funny looking because you can see the padding from the splints which were still on her arm and leg.

Peyton's little fingers were curled in the x-ray above.  In the one below, you can see the extra padding on the right side and around her thumb, which is part of the splint, not some sort of defect!  Recall that she had a wrist fracture.

I can't make out the fracture too well in the x-rays above.  However, when it comes to her leg, I can tell where that fracture is.  It's almost right at the top of the tibia.  again, all that stuff on the right side from top to bottom is the extra padding from the splint.

After x-rays were done, we went back to Ortho down the hall.  We were put in a room then moved to the cast room.  The assumption being that she would be swapping out splints for casts.  The doctor popped into the room and said everything looked like it was healing really well.  Remember, the wrist fracture {back around 2/14/13} was said to be about 3-4 weeks old and the leg fracture just days old.  We fully expected her to get casts at this point.  Instead, she is healing well and the splints were removed and no casts were put on!!  She is free!!  I'm still a bit shocked over that.  Now, all that said, I am extremely nervous about her not having any protection on those bones, but Dr. M said that short of putting her in a bubble, there's not much we can do to protect her bones anyway.

We returned home and Peyton actually spent some time in her wheelchair for the first time at home since she came home on 2/14.  She also spent some time on the floor on her play mat.  She hasn't been very active at all lately.  She made no attempts to roll at all, but she did fall asleep eventually on the floor.  She did a pretty good job of fighting of sleep for a while!  Here she is below, free of splints {her right leg/left arm...but in the picture look on on the right side for the arm, left side for the leg}.  In person you can tell there is still some swelling in the arm, but it's not horrible.  Her leg is considerably less swollen.  It is still fairly bruised though.  We'll be keeping up with the pain meds round the clock for sure {not that we haven't been as it is}.  I can only imagine that being free from the splints might cause her to have more discomfort now that she is able to move freely.

Please say some prayers that she continues to heal well and that she doesn't re-injure her arm or leg or injure anything else!!