broken arm

Well, this seems like old news now, but it has made our summer quite eventful so I must do an entire blog post to cover the event.  For the past six years or so we have not escaped our Bear Lake trip without an injury resulting in a trip to the doctor.  This year did not let us down and I am beginning to think it is a Bear Lake jinx that our family cannot escape!

Sunday, July 10th started out great with our regular trip to Laketown to attend Sacrament meeting, then we drove up Logan Canyon to do our annual hike at Limber Pine and that was extra fun this year because we found snow, a lot of snow! We returned to the condo and some of the kids went off to the playground with my sisters, I stayed and was "crafting" with some others making duct tape flip flops and Travis had just come in from playing catch with Holden when Emmaline came running up to say Austin was hurt and had broken his arm.  I thought she was joking until I looked out the window and  saw my sister running towards the condo pushing a stroller with Austin in it.  My sister does not run for fun.  When we saw Austin's arm there was no question he had a severely broken arm!  He later explained it to me like this, "I fell off the monkey bars and then it was like Harry Potter's broken arm in the movie", and that is a pretty accurate description of his arm, if you have seen the movie.

Austin standing under the monkey bars that he fell from.

From Travis' training with ski patrol, he knew this type of break and knew we needed to head to Logan right away. The trip down Logan Canyon was awful and long.  I can't say much more about it than that.  Austin was SCREAMING in pain and I was helpless in the backseat with him as Travis flew through the canyon at about 90 mph.  I can say that I was given a tender mercy, although I was 1. hungry, 2. in the backseat, 3. facing sideways and looking down at Austin the entire way, I did not get  the slightest bit carsick which is normally the norm.

We arrived at Logan Regional and they x-rayed and examined Austin's arm and let us know pretty quickly that this was not a break that they were equipped to handle.  We would be heading to Primary Children's in Salt Lake City via an ambulance.  They were able to give Austin some pain medication in short intervals to alleviate the pain until we got to Primary's.

 Austin at ER in Logan. They had to cut off his shirt, and it was one of my fav's. :(

Getting ready to be put into the ambulance. 

Austin in the ambulance on our way to Salt Lake.  If you look through the back window you can see Travis following closely behind.

Once we arrived at Primary Children's, everything went extremely fast.  A team of orthopaedic doctors were there within minutes, they examined him and left to consult with the head doctor about whether the surgery would take place that night or in the morning.  They returned in about 10 minutes and said Austin would be in surgery in about 30 minutes.  He had some nerve damage to his fingers that made them want to operate sooner than later.  So just after midnight, Austin went into surgery to have in medical terms a closed reduction, percutaneous pinning left supracondylar humerus fracture, or pins put into his left arm elbow.  The surgery was about 40 minutes and the doctor said it is the most common childhood surgery done at Primary Children's.  Everything went great and although Austin had a pretty severe fracture of this type, he would heal in about 6 weeks and his nerves are supposed to be all back to normal within 3 months.

 Austin x-ray of the break.

After surgery at Primary Children's.

After a very sleepless night we were released at about 10:30 a.m. to go back to Bear Lake.  Austin kept asking to go back to the "condo".  Surprisingly he did very well the remainder of the week at Bear Lake.  He complained very little of pain and made the best of his broken arm.

We had planned on staying 2 weeks at Bear Lake this year, which I was very much looking forward to, but because of Austin I decided not to stay the extra week.  He needed to see a doctor in Idaho Falls to get a hard cast on his arm and I thought it might be torture keeping him out of the sand and water for 2 whole weeks.

On July 19th we had an appointment with a friend who is an Orthopedic doctor in Idaho Falls.  Austin was supposed to be getting his hard cast and all he could talk about for days prior was "when am I getting my blue cast?!?!"

 So excited for his blue cast!

Unfortunately, once this cast was removed, they examined his arm and did several x-rays, it was determined that one of the pins had slipped allowing his bone to move so it was no longer lined up the way it needed to be in order to heal properly. This meant SURGERY #2, another left supracondylar humerus fracture, pin removal.  The surgery was set for later that afternoon. 

My afternoon was rushed, I had to swap up some plans we had for the day, situate the other kiddos and make multiple calls to our insurance to try and get them to authorize an out-of-network, out-of-state, second emergency surgery in 2 weeks. I was also supposed to MAKE SURE Austin DID NOT EAT ANYTHING!  Try it one day, tell your five year old that they can't have anything to eat or drink for the entire day.  IMPOSSIBLE.  It proved to be impossible because Austin ate something.  Yup, after suffering through the entire day of whining about 15 minutes before we were supposed to get in the car to go to the hospital, I got distracted and he ate some Cheetos.  Thank goodness, I guess, that it was Cheetos because the evidence was left on his fingers, otherwise, I would have never known. Even with orange Cheeto fingers, he swore to me that he didn't eat a thing.  We went to the hospital and I told the nurse that I thought he had eaten in the last 30 minutes.  She questioned him and got him to admit that maybe he ate 2 Cheetos.  The anesthesiologist didn't want to risk it, so the surgery was postponed until 6 AM the next morning.

Bright and early, July 20th, Austin had his second surgery and his blue cast put on.  He did pretty well but was definitely grumpier about the whole ordeal this time around.

 Here is the pin that they removed and replaced with a new one.

Austin just out of surgery with his new blue cast.

Going home!

 The first to sign his cast.

The last 10 days have been great, no problems, we see the doctor again on Tuesday and hopefully he will say in another week we can have the cast taken off in AZ!