Bad Right Femur Fracture

Ugh.  I had been looking forward to posting about our big snow storm and now have to write about Molly's long night with a broken leg.  I was at soccer last night and Jim was getting Molly ready for bed and she fell while using her walker.  She has been complaining about knee pain off and on for the past several days, which was probably an indicator that she had a weak spot forming.  

This was our worst fracture to date.  Thank goodness she has a rod in the leg.  I got home within 20 minutes of the fracture and we made a splint, which is a very emotionally draining process.  It is hard to take off the parent hat and put on the nurse/doctor one for your own child.  As we made the splint (which helps to immobilize the bones) you end up moving the very limb she doesn't want moved and the screaming can be intense and horrible.  We had the splint on within 1-2 minutes and that did seem to provide some needed support.  The leg swelled fairly quickly and she just kept crying and saying her leg hurt, even with the splint on.  In the past once we got the splint on and kept her still that coupled with some good pain medication has been effective at allowing her to rest.  She did not sleep at all last night.  As soon as she would start to fall asleep she would jerk her body (like that feeling you sometimes get that you are falling as you start to nod off) and this would really hurt her leg and it only took a few times of this before she must have decided she would just rather not sleep.  She watched movie after movie all night long.  

Poor Jim is coming down with a nasty chest cold at the same time and so we all had a rough night.  This is the first time I have found that the medicine and splinting didn't seem to be enough.  It is hard to find ways to soothe her when she is in such significant pain.  All I want to do is pick her up and hug her, but of course the last thing she wants is to be moved at all.  I am feeling so sad for her.  This has been a very difficult year full of pain.  I am not loosing sight of the fact that she is doing far better than we ever would have imagined, but it is still so hard to see your little girl in such significant pain and you don't have any tricks left to help comfort her.  

We went to the orthopedists office today for x-rays and she did far better with the transporting to and from the car than I would have predicted.  She fell asleep in the car on the way home (after a few more of the painful jerks as she fell asleep) and is still resting there now - keep your fingers crossed that she gets some good sleep.

Dr. Esposito just happened to call last night to discuss her humerus (upper arm) x-rays from last week and gave me some good advice and reassurance that we were doing the right things.  Boy do we LOVE Dr. Esposito.  He predicted right about where the fracture ended up being.  He was hopeful that she would be comfortable within the next few days thanks to the rod, but we will have to wait and see.  Without seeing the films his thoughts were that we would wait and see if the leg healed properly on its own, which would be nice since she just has surgery last month.  We know that we only have 3-12 months left before one of these fractures will send us to surgery, but the longer we can wait the bigger the rods will be and then the longer they will last for her.