Other Spring Break Stuff I Haven't Blogged About Yet

I've told you about the Boy-venture 0f 2011.

You know about Dane's loose tooth.

But did you know about this?

Yes, that is my daughter wearing a long leg splint sitting in the lobby of our favorite children's hospital.

Let me back up a little bit. Tuesday afternoon, while I was at work, I got a phone call from my mom. She was outside on the driveway cleaning out my nasty van (because she's awesome), and Emerson had just gone into the backyard to play. After a couple of minutes, Mom hears Emerson crying, and goes outside to find Emmy sittin g on the porch with a skinned up right elbow and right knee. Our back porch is basically a concrete slab, nothing to climb up and fall off of, so as best we can figure, Emerson tripped over her feet or a piece of chalk or a wayward soccer ball and hit her knee and elbow on the concrete. Mom told me on the phone that Emmy was being very dramatic about it, telling everyone about her bandaged up boo-boos, wanting to be carried and sit on the couch and watch movies. My little drama queen.

When I got home, I kissed the girl and her boo-boos, and watched as Miss Emerson limped around the house, crying and wanting to be carried. It didn't seem to hurt her to bend her knee, but she genuinely did not want to bear weight on that leg. It seemed to be more painful than a skinned knee should be. After we put her to bed, she continued to cry and fuss off and on for a couple more hours, until finally I gave her some Tylenol with codeine and put her in my bed for the night.

The next day, she was walking a little bit better, but still limping quite a bit. Not giving it much thought, I let her tag along Wednesday afternoon to Dane's follow up appointment with the hyperactive orthopedic. He saw her limping around and expressed some concern. Before I knew it, two and a half hours had passed and the three of us were still sitting with hyper-ortho in his office. He had given Emmy a full exam, moving the leg, feeling the leg, and watching her walk around the office. X-rays were done of the knee from every imaginable angle, x-rays of the lower leg, and x-rays of the opposite knee were taken for comparison purposes.

For a skinned knee. Because my daughter tripped on the back porch.

I was starting to wonder if perhaps hyper-ortho was really crazy-ortho, when he came to talk to us about Emerson's x-ray. He thought he may have seen an abnormality on the very end of the femur by the knee, right at the growth plate. Meanwhile, Emerson is smiling, giggling, and coloring, with her legs bent underneath her. Dr. Crazy sent the x-rays to his partner, who agreed with him that it may look not-completely-normal, but it likely was fine since Emerson wasn't tender anywhere on her leg. It may have looked abnormal because of the particular angle of her leg in the x-ray.

But we should put her in a splint and keep her from weight-bearing for the next 5 days just in case.

Fabulous.

One kid with a broken arm and another one with a full toes-to-thigh leg splint? I think I would like my Mother Of The Year trophy in gold instead of silver, please.

Wednesday night found me working an overnight shift, while my mom stayed home with the kids. (Brandon is out of town, remember? I don't think my mom had any idea what she was getting herself into). I wandered back home at 7am and promptly fell asleep for the next 5 hours. I awakened at noon to find not one, but three missed calls on my cell phone from hyper-ortho's cell phone number. Turns out, he had also left messages on my home phone, and even tried to track me down at work. You get an A+ in persistence and follow-up, Hyper Doc. I look over at my totally comfortable looking daughter, playing and in no obvious pain, and consider just placing all of my children in a padded room for the next 10 years so no more bones get broken.

I call Dr. Crazy back on his cell phone, as instructed, and learn that he is still concerned about the possible abnormality on Emmy's x-ray, and after consulting with a radiologist, is concerned about a fractured growth plate. He tells me that these types of fractures can require surgery to repair, and that repairs have to be done within a few days after the injury occurs or permanent growth problems can occur. He tells me that he hasn't stopped thinking about Emerson's leg since we left his office the day before, and he made an appointment for her to see a pediatric orthopedic doctor down at the big children's hospital in Houston early the next morning. He wanted an ortho doc who sees kids as young as Emerson all the time to see her x-rays and assess her. He again expressed concern that she may need surgery.

He may have said other stuff, but this is all I heard.

Please make sure my name is spelled right on that Mother Of The Year trophy.

May I remind you, that Emerson tripped and skinned her knee on the back porch. And all of a sudden, may have a fractured growth plate in her femur requiring surgery.

So bright and early Friday morning, Emerson and I headed down to the big hospital in Houston, the same building she has been in many times before, seeing adoption doctors and audiologists and cleft palate surgeons. And now orthopedics. I briefly wonder if she thinks fondly back to her days in the orphanage, when she didn't spend quite so much time with doctors. We sat in the lobby, watching movies and taking this picture:

I handed over the x-rays from earlier this week, along with the three pages of notes hyper-ortho had written up about Emerson, and she posed for a few more x-rays at the children's hospital. Then she posed for Mommy's camera:

We played with stickers, worked puzzles, read books, and colored while waiting for the doctor. Still not sure if we would be told Emerson needed immediate surgery, I hadn't let her eat or drink anything that morning, which led to this face when I denied her the goldfish that she found in my purse:

The doctor came in, poked around and bent Emmy's leg for a bit, and proclaimed the x-rays, seen by two of their pedi-orthopedics and their radiologist, to be good. The doctor threatened to put Emerson back in a splint if she was still hesitant to bear weight on the leg, so we got Emerson to walk a few laps around the hallways, still limping a little, but overall walking much better than she was earlier this week. Given Emerson's improved gait, the pedi-ortho decided to call this a "bad contusion" (aka "bruise") as opposed to a "toddler fracture" or fracture of the growth plate. After four days, two orthopedics, too many x-rays to count, a long leg splint, and a still-limping three year old, praise God, there is no fracture to Emerson's leg.

So. Long story short, Emerson fell down and bruised her knee.

Her propensity for drama does not bode well for her teenage years.

(*Disclaimer: I mock our hyperactive orthopedic doctor a bit. But I agree with every single thing he has done for my children so far, and am thankful that he takes the conservative route when it comes to my kids' limbs. As he puts it, "She has to use this leg for the next 80 years." I agree with him that a fracture needs to be ruled out on a kid who is limping 24+ hours after a seemingly minor injury, and as a parent, I am grateful that he took the initiative to ensure that Emerson was seen promptly by a specialist. Wouldn't trade him for the world.)