Busted

So this happened this week:

On Thursday afternoon Katie fell off a 2′ balance beam on the playground at school and landed on her shoulder. The school nurse saw no swelling or discoloring, and since Katie’s mobility seemed fine, she gave her an ice pack and didn’t think any more of it.

I was volunteering at the school that day, and when Katie ran up and told me about her injury, I had the same reaction as the nurse. But I was suspicious . . . when Katie was still unable to lift her left arm above her shoulder, and cried when she changed her clothes, I knew something was up. Because I had seen this before.

The next day was a whirlwind of doctor visits and x-rays, and yup: “non-displaced fracture of proximal humeral.” This means that the bone is partially broken, which means a sling instead of a cast.

For those of you keeping score, this is the exact same kind of injury in the exact same place on the body as the one Eleanor had at the same age (only Eleanor’s happened two days before Katie’s birth, which made life interesting).

I guess my kids all fall down the same way?

As you can see in the picture above, Katie has her arm in a sling, but also an ACE bandage to keep her arm immobile. We’re scheduled for a visit with an orthopedist at Children’s Hospital, and hopefully they will have the correct kind of sling for her with a built-in-strap. Katie’s always wiggling her sling loose and I’m constantly scooting it around on her body to get it back in place. Katie thinks it’s a fun novelty now, but I think she’s going to be mightily tired of that sling by the end.

In the meantime, the doctor’s orders are to “keep both feet on the ground,” meaning no climbing trees, riding bikes, or going on playground equipment. She has a note excusing her from PE for the next bit, and I’ve gotten a refund on her next session of karate class. I hope she doesn’t go stir-crazy from lack of exercise by the time it’s all over.

In the meanwhile, please enjoy some pictures of Eleanor’s modern dance class! It was parent watch week this past Wednesday.

There are only 2 kids in the class, which made it easy to get a snap of her dancing alone.

It’s looking likely that Eleanor will be coming to the end of her dancing career at the end of the school year. I’m not super-thrilled with this class, and Eleanor doesn’t seem super-committed. But we’ll see.