Broken tibia!

On Saturday, October 23, 2010, Parker rolled off the couch and broke his right tibia. Poor guy. We'd skipped out on sending them to a friend's house for date night because Thomas had been filling sick all day, and it wouldn't be worth leaving the house when we could have a nice, quiet evening at home. And we did! Parker and Evan had been wrestling and rough housing, until we asked them to stop. They did, and Evan was playing on the floor and Parker was lying on the couch. Thomas was gathering the trash to take out, and I was loading the dishwasher. All of a sudden, we heard a thud, and Parker started screaming. He had rolled off the couch, and caught his leg underneath him. He screamed for about forty-five minutes, with cold sweats. He finally fell asleep in my arms, while Thomas was talking to a nurse deciding whether or not to take him into the ER. We'd really just called in order to find an ER that accepted our insurance. The nurse didn't know, so we called some friends.

Thomas took Parker to a hospital that had a separate pediatric ER. They took x-rays, for which Parker screamed because the tech kept grabbing his leg at the break. They actually sent Parker home, saying the x-rays were negative. They did reassure us that the radiologist would look at the films in the morning. It was nice to be able to give Parker a real bath Sunday morning... the last for four weeks! The hospital called during Sunday school, and Thomas took Parker in to get casted. Yeah, we were right: the leg was broken. It's actually called a "toddler fracture." Children's bones are flexible, but the insides are still fragile. Parker broke the inside of his leg, but the outside of the bone wasn't fractured--which is probably why the ER peeps missed the break. Thomas was excited to show the films to some of his professors... especially since there was no cortical interruption (breakage of the outside of the bone.)

We had Parker stay off his leg for the first few days, and kept him home from preschool. He asked us to carry him until Monday afternoon, when he started crawling to get around. It was a little tough getting him to the potty (oh yeah! He potty trained during general conference weekend!) but he did great. He wore a diaper for awhile, just because it was easier to not have to pull undies off over his sore leg. He still did really well though. We sent him to preschool when he was crawling, and he did great inside, but didn't enjoy recess. He started walking after about a week, and we figured out that Parker did better if we brought him in late, after recess. It's been a crazy four weeks, and we're excited for Parker to get his cast off tomorrow. Yay!