Wounded Wing

Just before noon yesterday, I was taking Connor back for another diaper change and was holding onto him by his wrist and he was running along (he loves to take my hand and run back to his room). He lost his footing and started to fall, so I grabbed him more tightly by the wrist to keep him from falling, and then set him back down on his feet again. He started crying and I squatted down next to him to check him out and he smiled at me and ran off, so I figured the big tears were more just because he was mad he almost fell. Got him back to his room and laid him down and started changing his diaper and he started crying again. He cries often when I change his diaper because he's mister busy-body and how dare I pin him down to change him.... LOL So I still didn't think much of it. But at lunch time a few minutes later when I looked over and saw him shoveling food into his mouth with the fork in his left hand instead of his right, I started to wonder. So then I went over and started lightly touching his arm (right) and he immediately burst into tears. And as soon as I'd stop touching it, he'd stop crying. Tested up by his elbow and down by his wrist, same thing each time. No swelling, no bruising, but obviously tender to being touched or moved, and he wasn't using it, AT ALL. I called Dan at work and we decided we should probably take him in to be seen since he can't really communicate exactly what was going on. I took him to the Prompt Care in our area instead of making the further drive to the hospital. I know it would have taken four times longer going to the hospital. I expected x-rays first thing, but the doctor came in and said based on the explanation of the injury, he was rather certain it wasn't broken and that it was a radial ulna subuxxation (I made him right it down for me!), which basically means the muscle got pulled too far and the bone was able to slip out of place a bit, causing pain, but only when moved. Which explains why the kid was running around happy as a clam, but unwilling to move the arm. I assumed it was more his wrist, but the doc said it's the elbow area that gets messed up. He did something he called a reduction, which was pretty much twisting and shoving CJ's arm against his chest (Connor's chest) to get everything back in place. He said kids are fine 10-15 minutes later, almost as a rule. SO, he left us alone for 15 minutes, came back in and Connor was still refusing to use the arm, so he did the reduction again and checked on us 15 minutes later (more like 20, though! lol) and Connor STILL wasn't using the arm, and was still crying TONS when they'd move it or touch it, so then he ordered x-rays to double check nothing was broken. X-rays came back fine. They put him in a sling in case the arm still hurts because the bone is shifting around in place too much. With the arm bent, the bone has a better chance of being in the correct place as the muscles firm back up around the area. With his arm hanging straight, it puts pressure on the bone to possibly shift it out of place. NORMALLY, they don't have to sling because kids are fine right away. He was a little concerned that Connor was still favoring it so heavily, but with x-rays ruling out breaks (I should add a radiologist still has to view them, but from the docs view, the x-rays look fine), there was nothing more to do at that point, but wait. If CJ was still favoring the arm on Monday, we were supposed to go back to try another reduction and possibly another round of x-rays and if he was STILL favoring the arm and x-rays STILL don't show anything, we'd have had to meet with an orthopedic surgeon to try and figure out what's going on. HOWEVER, I'm happy to announce that right about 5:30pm last night he started using the arm and you'd never know anything happened to him yesterday.

Here he is in the little sling: