We came home from vacation and life was back to normal... for a little while.
Olivia looking stunning as a princess! Then we had an 'accident' while walking over to Grandma's house. I didn't want her to walk back home in wet clothes so I fashioned a skirt for her out of my jacket. It ended up being a nice photo of all three and that doesn't happen often.
...and then this happened... a day or two after Mother's Day I get a phone call that Amelia hurt her foot and can't walk on it and they were going to the ER to get things checked out.
I left work and met Tony and Amelia at the hospital. She was in good spirits but didn't know what was ahead. She had an x-ray and they found that there was a fracture in both bones in the lower leg (tibia and fibula). We'll never know the actual story, but basically Olivia was 'playing' on my elliptical machine and Amelia was behind/under and one of the pedals ran over her leg. She cried out, but it was initially thought that she was involved in a skirmish with her sister so nothing was done at first. It wasn't until a little later that we knew that it was a problem because she couldn't even stand on the leg and had to crawl her way out of the corner where the incident happened.
My phone was dying at the hospital, so I wasn't able to take any pictures of her getting the cast on, but she was really good during all of it - even the waiting around. The part where she lost her cool was after the cast was initially put on. In order to accommodate for swelling, the cast is 'scored' all the way down on both sides. A pretty noisy saw is used to do this. Yes I said SAW. It's a saw blade that doesn't cut the skin, but it does cut the cast. She was brave for the first few seconds, but after that she started yelling/screaming "ow ow ow ow" and things like "I want to go home". I had to hold her steady because she was NOT going to let this happen easily. After she was done, she let me know she was mostly scared of the noise from the saw and said "I yelled a little bit..."
We were out of the hospital in a few hours and on our way home with a full leg cast - up to the top of her thigh and a bunch of instructions, scripts for pain medication and recommendation for a pediatric orthopedist in the area. She fell asleep during the car ride home she was so exhausted.
She had this full cast on for a little over a week and then got a shorter one, but I felt like it was forever since she wasn't able to walk at all and she had to be carted everywere. Luckily she's the lighest but it still wasn't easy. The other two after a while caught on and wanted special treatment - wanted to be picked up and carried more than normal but I could have seen that coming.
After she got her shorter cast, she still had to stay off her foot for about two weeks and then was able to walk on it using a special 'boot' on the bottom of it. After about another week or two of using the boot, she had the cast removed altogether and could attempt to walk normally. She was given an aircast to use just in case. She was first very hesitant to even try and walk without anything on her leg but little by little she was more confident.
This happened in May and it's currently the middle of July and she's been running and jumping for the past few weeks like nothing happened. I'm just glad there were no lasting repercussions from the break and pray something like this doesn't happen again.
