Are our children made of paper-mache?

On Monday morning after Ryan drove Gabriel to school, John and Christian were running around the house giggling at each other. At one point they collided in the hallway, and Christian fell down. He started crying immediately, so I picked him up, thinking he had bumped his head or something. But he kept on crying and started holding his right foot. Ryan and I looked at it and the foot and ankle were a little swollen and purplish, and Christian refused to stand or put any weight on it.

So I put Christian and John in the car and drove to the nearest urgent care clinic (we don't have a pediatrician yet). The doctor there did not inspire confidence in me. He seemed like he hadn't worked with children at all. He observed Christian and x-rayed his knee and found nothing. He said, "We can x-ray his ankle or you can take him home and see if it gets better." I decided to take him home and see if he was any better the next day. And he wasn't--though he didn't seem like he was too uncomfortable most of the time, if he tried to stand he would start crying and collapse. I left a message for the doctor that morning and asked him to call back to advise us, and he never did. This morning I thought, "To heck with this, I'm going to find an expert to figure out what's wrong!"

So I did a little internet research and called the Pediatric Orthopaedic outpatient facility at Riley Hospital in downtown Indianapolis and made an appointment for later in the day. Once we got there, the intern heard what happened, looked at Christian's leg and said, "He's probably got a toddler fracture, we'll send you for x-rays." The actual doctor took one look at the x-rays and said, "yep, it's a toddler fracture, we'll go ahead and cast the leg." Twenty minutes later Christian had a full cast on his right leg, and it will stay on for the next four weeks. The doctor said he will probably figure out how to walk with the cast on; he already seems more comfortable and cheerful.

It's been a crazy day. Gabriel had a dentist appointment scheduled after school, and we had to cancel that. While Christian was bawling in the x-ray room, Gabriel's school called to let me know that Gabriel was feeling sick and was sitting in the office with the secretary. I was already downtown, not far from the school, but I couldn't exactly leave the hospital to go pick him up. When we were finished at Riley, we had just enough time to drive the ten minutes to Lumen Christi and get in the pick-up line. Now we're all home, and boy, it feels good!

The kids haven't been sick all summer. Not once. But we've had two freak accidents that resulted in broken bones. I really hope this is it for a while!

The cast goes all the way up his leg under his shorts. Although the fracture is below the knee,  little kids need to have a full leg cast so that it will stay on properly.