November 2, 2010

Margaret the Magnificent

Friday, October 1....
A normal Friday afternoon, a bit lazy...
went to get the kids off the bus, when....
Maggie hobbles off the bus sobbing.
She sprained her ankle at school, jumping rope at 1st recess!! Why didn't someone call me?!
We iced and wrapped her and told her to take it easy. By Wednesday she was walking fine, so I didn't even think to wrap her for gymnastics.
But....halfway through class, she had a fall....off the high balance beam, and re-injured it!
It looked BAD! It looked worse than before...with weird bruising. The coaches wanted us to go to the ER. We opted for a cheaper route, one that has worked for us before....Dr. John Harmon, a really awesome chiropractor who specializes in sports injuries.
After x rays....he said he was sure she had fractured her growth plate, and he sent us on our very unhappy way to go see Dr. Shae, a pediatric orthopedic specialist.
Thursday, October 7th....Confirmation...
Maggie had a non-displaced fractured growth plate!!!
A cast HAD to be put on, and PINK was the color she picked!


After Maggie received the news that she needed a cast, and not surgery... she was spastic! Like Christmas had just come, and she had the most awesome present ever!

She paraded around, flaunting her cast, and making all her sisters jealous! Silly girls!
About 1 week into the 3 weeks required, she started hating it. She HATED baths, she hated how it itched! Most of ALL, she HATED not being able to do kart-wheels!
She was caught several times trying to scratch down her cast with things, like pencils...NAUGHTY!!

Joe was also....well... naughty!
He was being a bit dramatic.... and got into a fight with the wall.
Let's just say, the wall won!
We thought he had broken his wrist... but he WOULD NOT go to the Doctor.
It bruised bad, and he had some pain during movement... but he COULD move it.
So, we wrapped it securely, with a brace, and he took Ibuprofen for a week for the pain.
It looks good today, but he still has pain when we play "slug-bug".

Sunday night, 3 days before the cast comes off....Maggie did yet another NAUGHTY thing.
She couldn't sleep, and came upstairs after 10 crying. She said her ankle hurt...I asked her if she needed Tylenol...she said NO. The pain was being caused by a marker lid in her cast.
How did a marker lid get stuck down deep inside her cast?! She was scratching!!! It got too low, into the tighter part of the cast, became lodged and there it stayed!
In unbearable pain, we (not so quickly) came up with a plan...to cut off some of her cast, as to keep her poor ankle still in the cast, but to get the lodged lid out. After 11pm, the cast was cut, thanks to a cutco knife, and Maggie was crying again....this time in relief and joy. We put cotton balls around the top of the cast, so it didn't hurt her, and used good ol duct tape to finish her up!

We had to cut off about 6 inches of the cast, and the lid was still lower than that!

Good thing it came off when it did...October 27th!
I couldn't take another week of this extreme girl!
She has gymnastics tomorrow, and she can't wait!
I will wrap her, I promise!

3 comments:

Joe Green said...

Maggie is so awesome... And the wall didn't win, he just forced me to execute a tactical retreat...

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Sean said...

Hi,

Just came across your blog while searching for growth plate fractures. Very cool reading... Our 5 year old was diagnosed with a nondisplaced fracture in her ankle last week. She will also be in a cast for 3 weeks until early December. Just wondering how your little one was doing and if there were any complications after the cast came off? Wishing you all the best of health...