Cast Replaced With a Splint
Anna had a cast-removal appointment yesterday morning, but 30 minutes before she was due to arrive, I got a call from school saying she’d just vomited all over the floor. Once I’d brought her home, I called the hospital, and the lady there told us to just come whenever she was well again.
Anna spent the day watching My Little Pony – Friendship is Magic on YouTube, complaining that she was hungry, and driving me mildly insane in the process (gaaaah, those cartoon voices…!! Make them stop… Make them STOP!!!). She was pretty good about not overindulging on food, staying away from dairy etc., and survived the day without vomiting any more. (Finnur on the other hand was bedridden after a night spent intestines-cleansing, I was very blah, but had no real symptoms, and Bjarki was happy as a clam at daycare.)
Since Anna couldn’t go to school today (I’m a stickler about observing the no-illness-for-24-hours rule) we just showed up at the hospital 24 hours late.
Better late than never! The cast had begun crumbling to pieces, some of the reinforcements had peeled away the day before, and it stunk!
When we arrived, the same lady I had talked to on the phone the day before was working in the reception, so she knew what was going on. We were lucky and only had to wait for some 5 minutes before being called in.
Anna’s cast being ‘sawed’ open. It ‘tickled’! 🙂
Oh so excited to finally get rid of the cast!! 🙂
More tools were summoned but finally…
… the arm was free (!!!) and…
… the smelly cast was in the garbage bin.
Once the cast was off, Anna was sent to the x-ray division to get x-ray-ed yet again. It turned out that her bone is technically still broken, but there’s a nice sliver of new-bone around the breakage which is apparently good.
The side view. Since the bone is still healing, and she’s an active kid, the doctor ordered a splint for her arm, which we ourselves can remove in two weeks.
In the process of getting a splint. First the nurse put down a layer of gauze and thick cotton. Then she put a layer of that fast-drying fiber-glass-ish-plastic on top of her hand, before wrapping it all up in some more layers and taping.
Putting the finishing touches on the splint. Thankfully, the elbow is now free to move, and the fingers also have more freedom. The doctor told us that if Anna had been an adult, he probably would have skipped the splint, but the he couldn’t trust a kid to be careful enough.
So that’s hopefully (almost) the end of the hand-breaking story. It’s been very educational for us all, and I think it’s given Anna an insight into a world she’s so far (thankfully) not really known much about at all!