The Walters: Broken Arm and Broken Swaddle

"Hey! Why are you calling me so early?"
"Well I broke my arm"
"No you didn't, did you?"
"Yes I did"
"Seriously?"
"Yeah"
"Well, how do I KNOW you broke your arm?"
"You can meet me at the ER in 30 minutes"

As many of you know, Nate did break his arm. For those of you who don't know the details of this last week, I will write them down for ya! How did Nate break his arm? He was snowboarding, fell on a jump and tried to catch himself. He said he heard it break and knew right away. His cousin, David, was with him and he didn't believe Nate until Nate took off down the mountain! Nate walked into ski patrol and they gave him oxygen since he looked a little pale and then David' friend Matt Steele drove him home to the ER locally since Matt needed to come in to study for school anyways. David kept snowboarding and Matt Walters met him up there to keep boarding LOL That's how they work!

SO I dropped Silas off with a friend and met Nate at the ER. Fortunately, the receptionist could tell that he was in a lot of pain (his teeth were chattering uncontrollably) so she got him back right away. I was surprised that he was able to talk and function so well and that his arm didn't look all that strange. He told me it was really painful and I could tell he was hurting but I think if it were me I would have been on the floor. The first nurse came in and asked Nate his pain level,8, then some more questions, then his pain level, 8, then another question, then his pain level, 8? Is she still asking us that?? LOL Weird. Then he walked over to xray. The technician doing the xray said "OH", Nate asked "What?", "Oh I can't talk to you about it." That's just what you want to hear when someone is looking at your bones! The Dr. comes in and tells Nate it is a completely broken radius about midway up his forearm (usually breaks closer to the wrist) and they need to reset it by pulling the bones apart and then putting them back in line, they'll give him local anesthetic and he shouldn't feel much. To which Nate replies, "Can't you just put me to sleep?" Dr.:"No, there are risks that come with that that we would rather avoid if we can. It's not a big deal, i just did this same thing on a 16 year old girl last week no problem."

Dr. starts to draw up the anesthetic and the lid comes flying off - anesthetic goes everywhere.....that should have been the sign. Dr. cleans up and proceeds to numb the area which involves injecting Nate intot he most painful areas and Nate hates needles. That was painful in itself but nothing like what was about to happen. Nate tells the Dr. that his wrist is hurting really bad and that his arm doesn't feel all the way numb but the Dr. assures him that it is and that the wrist pain is just because of everything else going on. And Nate also says - how will you know if it is not all the way numb and the Dr. says oh we'll know. Dr. brings in the second Dr. who will be pulling on the other half of Nates arm - she is WAY smaller than me and Dr. #1 wasn't a big guy either -how is this gonna work?? Well it doesn't. Nate is yelling in pain as the struggle to pull his arm and they finally stop. Nurse Nice runs in, "Is he ok???!" And she requests that he gets an IV for pain. "Well buddy, we can't get it. You did real good, I know that was painful. Looks like we will try again but we'll give you an IV for the pain and re-numb the area" Poor Nate then has to have more needles! Dr. is numbing one arm while Nurse Nice is putting an IV in the other.

Not his actual xray but an example -I'll post his real one later:

Second try =Nate wiggling around in pain, yelling and they think they got it...they wrap up his arm and Xray comes in. An hour later we find out it didn't work, not even close. Nate will need to be put to sleep temporarily so they can reset it. "That's what I told them to do in the first place" It's discouraging when you endure pain on top of pain for nothing. I couldn't be present for the next procedure so I went to feed Silas and brought him back with me to pick up Nate after it was done. The attending Dr. came in and told us with a surprised look on his face and says "We got it and it looks perfect. If you don't do anything else, I think you will be good" Great news! The Dr. got us out pretty quickly after that because the lady next to us was recovering from a suicide attempt and it was getting loud and nasty. Plus it was about 2 am at this point.

The next morning we called and got an appointment with the orthopedic surgeon in Valencia- closer to LA. Most people avoid specialists in this area because of repeated bad experiences -it appears that the knowledge and skill level of the doctors here isn't the greatest. We asked friends for recommendations and almost all said to go "down below" (LA). I guess it makes sense because the desert isn't the most desirable location to live and practice medicine. So we went to SCOI -Southern California Orthopedic Institute. They were great, very professional. Dr. Hanker came in, looked at the xrays and said "You need surgery. Anytime an adult breaks a bone like this it requires surgery. In addition, you have a specific kind of break called a galeazzi fracture which means that not only is the radius broken but your ulna is dislocated as it tries to compensate for the radius. Plus the ligaments surrounding the ulna are torn."

After surgery:

DISLOCATED WRIST?! No wonder the ER visit was killing Nate! They were pulling on his dislocated wrist without anesthetic to try to set the radius which ended up being pointless since he needed surgery. Now, I'm not saying that we aren't thankful for ER doctors because they do have an important job however in this case they should have just left it alone. And we understand that they were trying to help. They just are not trained to see specific things like this and really could have caused more damage not to mention the unnecessary pain. Nate had this happen with a dislocated finger a few years ago so he has sworn off ERs.

So we scheduled the surgery for Thursday morning. We left the house at 6am, me, Nate and Silas. Surgery was supposed to be an hour and ended up being 2 hours. So we were there from 7:30am to 3:30pm. Silas did great sleeping in the stroller, playing on the floor, sleeping some more. I was tired and hungry though! Nate was doing ok with the pain level until, well, until he wasn't. We got home and got him in bed then I went to drop of the prescription. Fortunately I had medicine at home from my c-section so I wasn't rushed. Oh I completely forgot to mention that we had been having extreme weather conditions with flooding and snow which of course made traveling around super fun! Thankfully, the Lord kept us safe. Suddenly Nate was in excruciating pain - it involved a 103 temperature, our friend Mandy picking up Silas while another friend Jasanna brought us the filled prescription and then we took off for the Urgent Care to treat the pain. We got o UC through the river/roads and Nate's arm is feeling better, so good that he wants to leave. Alright, what do you want to do Nate? "It's weird, sitting up helped it. Let's go to Bryan and Mandy's cause they have those big reclining chairs that I can sit it and we'll get Silas" Nate ended up staying the night there while I went home with Slias - I didn't see that one coming! It allowed me to a little most rest and not run around so much and Nate felt much better.
Puffy fingers:

Bruised Bicep:

Since then he has felt pretty good. He has to take breaks and it is still painful and swollen but everyday it gets a little better. WHe went to work for the first time today so we will see how that goes. Tomorrow we will visit Dr. Hanker to see how things are going and get the permanent cast. He ended up needing a plate in his radius and pins in his wrist as well. I'll put up a picture of what Nate's xray looked like below but I'll post his actual xray later.You can pray for his recovery to be quick, for Nate to contune on with school one handed (I have a lot of underlining and typing to do!) and for me to be a servant to my boys during this time. Nate can't help nearly as much now although he did get himself ready all by himself today LOL that sounds funny to say!

Now to the broken swaddle: Silas and his swaddle. That boy loves it! He is 4 months old and I can't just lay him down. Every tmie I battle to keep him asleep while I swaddle him and then put him down- which is fine at night cause he is really tired but during the day? It doesn't work so well plus he is almost out growing the blanket I use to swaddle him. I think part of the reason he wakes up at night is because he breaks free from the swaddle. Yesterday he didn't sleep at all for naps. I keep trying the just let him cry, squiggle, whine it out thing but he wins! After 45 minutes I usually go and get him because he is wide awake, He can be in a dead sleep on my shoulder or super tired and I will lay him down and he will fling or stretch himself awake. And then if I leave him there and walk away - he just stays awake playing or yelling at me. Sigh, any advice on how to get him to just lay down? Or take a bottle for that matter?
Swaddled