Baby’s First Cast

This morning, Baguette could stand briefly, but still wasn’t willing to take a step. So our pediatrician said that he wanted us to take her to an orthopedist. The only catch was that he didn’t think that we’d get in to see someone within our network on the afternoon of a Friday before a 3-day weekend. He therefore provided a referral to “the only guy in West L.A. you’ll be able to see today–but he doesn’t take your insurance.”

Another exam, more xrays, and $315 later, and what did we learn?

Baguette has a hairline fracture in her left tibia.

She also starts swim lessons tomorrow. Fortunately, this cast can go in the water. And next week she can go to day care. And the week after that, the cast will come off.

I’ll tell you what–I’m glad we went to the out-of-network guy. I’m glad we didn’t say, “Well, let’s see how she does over the weekend.” Because if we’d gone to someone else on Tuesday or Wednesday and then discovered that we’d left a broken bone untreated for a week? I can’t imagine. But it wouldn’t feel good.

Baby’s First X-Ray

So last night Baguette went into our bedroom, and a little later we heard a slappy thump followed by tears. She was sitting on the floor at the foot of our bed, and sobbing. I picked her up and cradled her and sang to her, and she kept sobbing for at least 15 more minutes. We examined her carefully and couldn’t find any bumps, bruising, or swelling, but she was clearly unhappy and uncomfortable. I was able to coax her to sleep, but she was restless and needed soothing all night.

Until 3:40 a.m., when she was wide awake. After some failed efforts at getting her to fall back asleep, we all got up to watch Sesame Street. She snuggled on the couch with Mr. Sandwich and smiled a bit, but was nowhere near her usual levels of enthusiasm.

She’s home for a few days anyhow, because her day care is closed for some teacher in-service time, and the plan was for Mr. Sandwich to stay home with her (he has more vacation time). So I went to work and called to see how they were doing.

At that point, Mr. Sandwich described it as “a sick, lazy day” with lots of Sesame Street. But later he took her out to play with her water table, and realized that Baguette hadn’t just been relaxing on the couch–she couldn’t stand up on her own.

So he called me and the pediatrician’s office, where we met a couple of hours later. Now, Baguette does not love going to the doctor’s office. She’s had relatively few visits, so she associates the doctor with shots and that weird stomach-poking thing. She wails incessantly at the top of her lungs, both at the nurse and at the doctor. It’s really, really hard to calm her down afterward; there is no calming her down during. But the doctor managed to examine her, and decided that he ought to send her to radiology.

And it turns out she feels exactly the same way about x-ray machines. While she was very–uncharacteristically–sedate in the waiting room, she screamed and screamed the entire time she was on the table to be x-rayed.

The results were normal, so no fracture–good news. And while the screaming was heartbreaking, it completely wore her out, and she fell asleep in my arms before we even got the update from the radiologist. She stayed asleep the entire way home and for several hours afterward.

So it’s likely to be a long night. Tomorrow, her pediatrician may provide another referral–this time to an orthopedist. And we suspect that we have a 2-year-old with a sprained ankle, particularly because now we can see some minor swelling. But she’s also smiling for the first time all day, and that’s an amazing relief.

Photo by microwavedboy, via Flickr.