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Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Hobblin' around

I'm a little late in documenting, but wanted to remember this season of life, so I'm writing it down now! On September 20th, Tommy and Tessa were playing at the park with my mom. She called me and I could hear Tommy screaming in the background. She said he had been walking and just fell down and started screaming that his ankle hurt. I met them at our house and carried him inside.

Those who know Tommy know that he can be just a touch.......dramatic. So when he's "hurt".....we never know if he's actually in pain or just being his normal Tommy self. So when I brought him inside, I was trying to watch and see if he was crying real tears or if he noticed when I touched his foot.

And he was. Poor guy was crying big tears and would wince and pull away when I touched his ankle. It was (of course) after 5pm, so his doctor's office was closed. Nick and I finally decided to take him to urgent care because his foot was swelling up.

We headed into town and by the time we got checked in and sat down in the waiting room, Tommy had stopped crying and was perking up a bit. We still weren't 100% convinced that he really had an issue or if he had just twisted his ankle and it was uncomfortable. Nick kept "testing" him and he had Tommy walk across the waiting room to get him a glass of water. Tommy limped just the slightest bit, but otherwise walked fine.

We had been waiting for about an hour and a half and were JUST about to leave because we thought he was fine when we got called back. They took x-rays and the doctor came back in and said he had an alvusion fracture on his left outer ankle. The way she explained it was that basically, his foot had twisted so hard that one of his tendons had pulled away from the bone and took a tiny chunk of bone with it. Yikes. She said it's usually a quick heal, but that he needed to have NO weight on it for at least 3-4 days and to use crutches. They didn't have any crutches his size, so she put him in an air cast, told us to try to find crutches the next day and to follow up with our primary care for more x-rays in about 5 days.

I kept him home from school the following day and could not find crutches his size ANYWHERE!! I eventually had a sweet Facebook friend that had some and lent them to me. Tommy's class was so sweet and sent home a packet of cards for him!

 I went ahead and kept him home the next day too (Friday) because it was still hurting really bad and the doctor had emphasized several times to make sure he put NO weight on it and we weren't sure how that would work at school. He was also still pretty wobbly on his crutches and we were worried they'd get kicked out from under him or that he'd fall, so I took Mr. Hop-a-long to work with me. 


He was bummed to miss out on his football game over the weekend, but we had gotten an appointment with our primary care on Monday, so we were pretty sure he was going to be able to play the following weekend since the urgent care doctor said it was a quick fix. Our regular doctor was all booked on that Monday, so we saw his partner instead. They did some x-rays to see if the fracture had healed at all and the doctor came in with surprising news. He said he didn't see an avulsion fracture and thought that urgent care had misread the x-ray. He was sending it to a radiologist to be sure, but said that Tommy could start walking on his foot and would be find to practice football on Thursday and play in the game on Saturday. Tommy was so excited!!

But.......the next day, our primary care office called and said they had sent the x-ray to a radiologist and the radiologist DID see a fracture, so they were going to refer us to an orthopedist. Wonderful. We got in the the orthopedist the very next day. They saw him and decided he needed to be in a cast for four weeks. Yay. He was less than thrilled. And I was kind of nervous because he can be so high maintenance when anything "different" is happening in his life, so I was hoping there wouldn't be any drama. He picked red for his cast color....




And of course his best girl had to be the first one to sign it!

The orthopedist had told us that it was okay for him to use crutches for a few days and then to just walk on it after that. He said that most kids are running around with their cast on by the end of the 4 weeks. So we were thrilled with that part!
 Tommy actually did super good about having the cast on! There was very minimal complaining (usually just when it itched and he couldn't scratch it!) and he didn't let it slow him down a bit!
We didn't let him play any football games in the beginning, but we let him practice with the team--just doing stretches and passing and throwing stuff (that's him in the orange shirt). 
 By the end of the four weeks, he was DYING to play football. Nick was also a little anxious for him to play because he had signed up to be the coach and then Tommy didn't get to play for almost the whole season! We finally agreed to let him play in the last game--he got to hand the ball off to the quarterback and it made his day! He was so excited to be able to do SOMETHING with his team instead of sitting on the sidelines. His team ended the season being undefeated (proud coach moment). On a side note--Nick gave Tommy a mohawk. They'd been planning it for months and kept calling it Hawktober. Oh brother.
 Tommy was scheduled on October 25th to get his cast off and we had a count down going. He was so excited! The orthopedist ended up calling me the day before his appointment and asked if I could come in that day instead of on the 25th. I only had two hours notice to leave work, drive all the way to Benton to pick him up and then all the way back to west Wichita for his appointment, but if I didn't take that appointment, they weren't going to be able to see him for several more days. So we made it work!

He was super nervous about getting his cast cut off because the nurse that put the cast on had told him they'd use a saw. We found out at his conferences that he had drawn a picture of a huge saw getting ready to cut his leg in his journal and had told his whole class how scared he was to get it cut off! He was relieved to see it was just a tiny little saw that couldn't cut him.
His leg was SO gross under that cast. His skin was all flaky and he kept having little meltdowns and saying that it felt too weird. He's been walking funny out of habit and I'm wondering when he's going to be back to normal! He said it doesn't hurt much though and he's so glad to not have the cast on anymore--we are too! Showers are so hard with a leg cast!