Gage's Broken Femur - posted: Dec. 3, 2008 at 8:59 PM

Hey everyone sorry it took me so long to blog about Gage it's been crazy around here. He is just starting to feel a bit better. He has had a lot of muscle spasms which are very painful so we've kept him pretty drugged up which in turn tends to make him a bit grumpy. But we have started to give him Motrin only which doesn't seem to have the same side effects as the Loritab and Valume. He's been such a trooper! He does require a lot of attention and with me being prego I can't really carry him around everywhere he would like to go so we have spent a lot of time laying in bed trying to keep him as busy as possible. He's napping now so I figured now's my chance.

OK so this is how it happened. Sat Nov 22nd at 4:20pm (I know the exact time it happened) he was jumping on and off the couch next to Dave. Dave decided to mess around and grab him mid air on his next jump. When he grabbed him it put Gage off balance making him fall head first. Before he could hit the ground Dave pulled him in and SNAP. Gage must have caught his leg on something and the weight of his body going forward and Dave pulling him back is what broke it. The sound of it braking was horrible! I think Dave was screaming louder then Gage, it freaked him out so bad. We were out the door in less then a minute. On our way out I was running around like a wild person trying to get something for Jack so we could take him to my mom's while holding him and I tripped over a bucket giving myself a pretty good rug burn on my knee. I drove while Dave held Gage. We went to the nearest Hospital. When checking in Gage was not crying at all anymore. The only time it seemed to hurt was when he moved. When I told the lady at the desk we think it was broke she said, "He's not crying." I was like NOW he's not. The Dr in the ER told us Gage brought the whole ER to a stop when they realized what happened. They were really good with him I don't really have any complaints. They were in a hurry to get his X-rays done so they did it before giving him any pain meds. Dave and I were down the hall listening to him scream and cry for us. That was hard! Then they had to transport him by ambulance to the Childrens Hospital to see the Orthopedic Dr. They had to put him out to put the cast on. They would have put a rod down his leg if he were older but because he is so young and his growth plates were not damaged they wanted to try to set the bone so that it was a little shorter then before because when a kid as young as Gage has an injury like that the growth plates go into overdrive making the injured leg grow faster then normal. So they wanted to make it a bit shorter to try to compensate for the growth, if anything the broken (left) leg will end up being longer then the other. We ended up staying the night and went home the next afternoon. They loaned us a car seat so we can get him from place to place. He was so good! When they gave him the IV he didn't even make one peep. He's such a big boy!

We went to the Dr's Monday to check the placement of the brake and it seems to be a bit crooked looking at it from the front from the muscle spasms. The first X-ray it was hard to even tell it was broken from the front so that worries me a bit but the Dr said it looks good and that the body will grow the bone so that it's straight again. In a couple weeks the bone should get sticky and start mending so if he has a spasm the jagged bone won't hurt him anymore. Not sure how long the spasms will last? The Dr said he will be trying to walk in a few weeks. Not totally sure how that works with his Spika cast but I will be excited when he can move around more. He is scheduled to get it off on the 29th. That will only be just over 5 weeks, kids heal so fast he should be good by then. I will post updates.

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts and prayers!