The story of the little girl with the broken arm...

Okay, I know it's driving some of you nuts that all of my posts are out of order! I'm sorry to report that I still have several more that I owe you, and they will not be in order either. But once I'm caught up, I plan to stay caught up!


Alright, so here's how Kallie broke her arm. She was in the living room and I was in the kitchen. Shane had just bought us a new Hoover Windtunnel vacuum cleaner. It was sitting out in the middle of the living room. Kallie was purposely balancing herself on the hose of the vacuum cleaner, and when it rolled she fell face forward onto the hardwood floor. It was such a loud fall that I went running from the kitchen, somehow knowing that she had to have hurt something. I scooped her up and quickly noticed that her little arm was curved. It was very obviously broken. Being the non-panicker that I am (ha!) I quickly gathered up all of the stuff we would need for the hospital & made arrangements for the boys to go to the Cuppett's. I think I was crying as much as Kallie. Shane warned me that it appeared to be a pretty bad break and that they would have to set it. Kallie was obviously crying alot at this point too.


So we went straight to Cook Children's Hospital (we've learned from past experience that when you try to go somewhere else, they just end up sending you to Cook's anyway...if it's a bad injury, that is) and the waiting room was packed. I signed her in and wrote something on the sign-in sheet like, "appears to be compound fracture, severe, CURVED" and they called us back within 5 minutes. The nurse in triage warned us that they would either have to put her to sleep to set it or they would have to do a conscious sedation. I was not feeling very brave at this point. Kallie, on the other hand, had stopped crying and was already talking about what color cast she was going to get.


They took us back to x-ray. The doctor finally came out and said that her radius was broken right in half, but luckily the other bone (what's it called?) was just fine. BIG sigh of relief. He also said that the break had a 15 degree angle to it, and they don't set anything under 20 degrees because they usually straighten out on their own. BIGGER sigh of relief! So she got a temporary cast that night and a hot pink cast that went all the way up her arm the next day.


She wore the pink cast for 3 weeks, and then she was able to get that one switched out for a short purple cast for the last 3 weeks. Now at least she is able to bend her elbow. She gets this one off on June 9th, just in time for summer!


Everywhere we go people ask her how she broke it. We have gotten so many funny looks from the response, "I fell off the vacuum cleaner." Since she's had her cast on she has fallen down the stairs head first, fallen out of several chairs, hurt her broken arm by running into things...I really don't know what to do with her. I don't know how to teach someone not to be clumsy. I'm afraid she gets it honest. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, read this. Anyway, we now have a both-feet-on-the-floor-at-all-times policy for all the women in our house.


This was in triage. Daddy made a splint out of cardboard and wrapped it for her. Did you know that if God didn't call him into ministry he would have been an EMT?



This was right before we went home. Cook's is so good...once Kallie got stickers & popsicles she pretty much forgot about her arm.



The long pink cast...



The short purple cast...

You can see by this picture that she is already breaking the both-feet-on-the-ground-at-all-times policy.