Broken Leg

On our fifth day here, the kids were jumping on the trampoline in our yard, and I heard Sylvie screaming. She was curled up in fetal position in the middle of the trampoline holding her left thigh. She said her leg hurt, but she wouldn't let me look at it or touch her. Finally, I called a neighbor who helped me move Sylvie inside, screaming and still refusing to move her hands so we could look at her leg. I didn't think it was broken because I think of a fracture being caused by impact, and she hadn't fallen off the trampoline. I let her rest there a few hours until Jonathan got home. She finally moved her hands, and we could see her femur was bent. We moved her screaming onto a make-shift stretcher (a closet shelf), put her in our friends' van, and J took her to the emergency room. Luckily, there is a very good hospital with Western-trained physicians very close to our house.

She had somehow landed funny when jumping, and the x-ray revealed a spiral fracture in the middle of her femur. An orthopedic surgeon was able to do surgery that night, inserting two long titanium nails through two slits on either side of her knee into the shaft of the bone. No cast, no plate, no screws. The nails stay in for 6 months and then she'll have another surgery to remove them.

Sad Sylvie

Wild Bedhead

The doctors made it sound like an easy recovery, saying that she could move her leg right away, be up on crutches within two weeks and walking with a limp by four. Well, whether or not these things were physically possible didn't matter to Sylvie, as fear kept her from trying much of anything. We stayed an extra night in the hospital because she wouldn't get into a wheelchair or use the bathroom. She spent the first week with her leg in the same position it had been in since the fall. A lot of screaming (mostly at me) and whimpering, so it was hard to tell whether or not she was still in pain. Even changing the band-aids on her knees involved her screaming and my coaxing and ultimately, a lot of crying. She did get used to the wheelchair and let me carry her to the bathroom. She was upbeat enough by the start of school two weeks later that she was willing to start on time.

It is now a month later, and she still isn't using the crutches, but she went swimming, which she liked, and she hops around a lot using walls or chairs to support her. Her quads in her left leg have definitely atrophied, so it will probably take her longer to walk normally, but we'll get there...eventually.

A side benefit of the surgery was that the breathing tube further loosened her already loose front teeth, so those came out within a week, and she has a new smile.

Halloween Face

Fun Place for My Tongue