My Leg Is Broken

It all happened because I was trying to be a good dog mom. We were heading to aNew Year’s Eve party at a friend’s house in the suburbs so poor sweet Sox would be locked in her crate for a long time. I figured taking her out to the empty lot across the street from our place and letting her run in the snow-covered field would help get her ya-yas out so that she’d sleep while we were gone and hardly miss us at all. Aleck had been inside all day and wanted to join me, like he often does, to encourage our pup to run in circles while we stand there and laugh. The snowboots went on and off we went. It’s hard for Aleck to walk on snow, sand, or any other uneven surface. It’s hard for everyone to walk on ice. And since it was a bit slippery in the parking lot by the field, I held his hand tight and we took it slowly until, crash, he went down right next to me, his hand still firmly in mine. Immediately he started shouting at the top of his lungs, “my leg is broken, my leg is broken,” and immediately I started trying to calm him down, “I’m sure it’s not broken, it’ll be ok, it’s probably a sprain, you just twisted it.” But I could tell I wasn’t helping and there was no way I could carry Aleck home on this slippery day and with the dog. Luckily Craig was close by in the car and he came and picked us all up.

When Aleck falls he doesn’t catch himself with his hands, since his elbows don’t have a lot of flexibility he might break an arm if he really tried to break a fall with his upper body. His knees have a very limited range of flexion as well so they don’t buckle underneath him when he falls, which helps to bring the entire body closer to the ground before impact. I’ve spent time on the playground watching kids around the same age fall and catch themselves, trying to pinpoint why it’s all so different for Aleck. When Aleck falls you might as well stand up straight yourself, cup your hand to your mouth and shout, “timber” at the top of your lungs, that is if you can’t catch him. Craig and I used to have cat-like reflexes during his preschool days, he’d fall every single day, it was just a matter of how many times.

And when Aleck falls I have our routine down pat. Step one is to comfort him, get him calm and get him to stop screaming or crying. Too much screaming and crying used to lead to vomiting and that’s one more crisis to manage on its own. Step two is to get him someplace where he feels safe and comfortable, away from people watching or trying to interfere. Step three is to assess the damage. We touch different places asking him what hurts, we test to see if he can move and operate any limb that might have taken the brunt of the fall. If it’s the upper body we are worried about a cell phone is often pulled out to see if he reaches for it, uses it with both hands, etc. At Ravinia Music Festival the resident doctor there watched this entire process once and when we got to the cell phone he was like, “oh, yeah, he’s fine.” And we nodded and told him he could go, we knew what we were doing. If the fall is bad enough that Aleck starts to scream right away he usually announces that he’s broken something which can be very alarming to the rest of the people at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. Usually, nothing is broken. For smaller falls he’ll sometimes cry later because the fear of it all has hit him, but he tries really hard to keep it together, it makes him feel brave.

Since it was NYE there was absolutely no way we were heading to the emergency room, despite the urgings from my friends who we wouldn’t be seeing that evening. After a few hours Aleck clearly couldn’t put any weight on his leg so our evening would be spent at home. I had torn my ACL years ago and was thinking it was something similar, it really didn’t look like a bad fall but his leg was twisted funny when he landed. No one wants to go to the ER on NYE if they can help it, and these same people also don’t want to be in the ER on New Year’s Day. It’s usually not the top staff, the place is packed with odd things people do to mark the passing of another year, and it’s certainly not a comfortable place for a kid who’s in pain. For us, he needs to be bleeding or organs not functioning to head to the ER. The last thing we want to do is wait two hours to have a medical student stand in front of us doubting that it’s only his leg that’s bothering him and asking us if we aren’t sure he didn’t fall on both of his arms because they look swollen and they don’t seem to be working right. Plus, if he needed surgery, we want to be with one of his orthopedic surgeons, not surrounded by ER doctors. Luckily for us, we had begun switching our care for Aleck over to Shriner’s Hospital this past summer since his surgeon there was available to see us on January 2nd. After X-Rays, we saw the fracture in his femur and the doctor asked Aleck what color cast he’d like. We all breathed a huge sigh of relief that surgery wasn’t necessary or even recommended for this simple fracture.

We got home and got Aleck settled on the couch with his favorite tech devices and Craig and I went into our all too familiar routine, discussing what care for Aleck was going to look like for the next three weeks until the cast would come off. Would we be able to make him comfortable at the dining room table or would all his meals be in the living room? Where are all of those muck pads from the hospital, let’s get a sheet on the couch and a pad there and then another pad in his bed since he won’t be able to get up to go to the bathroom when he needs to leading to a greater chance of accidents. No baths until the cast comes off, now where did I put the no-rinse soap? Got the pink tubs from the hospital, needed those when he had a horrible stomach virus a few months ago, and where did I put that spitoon (what I call the little plastic round thing that’s made for bed-ridden people to spit when they are brushing their teeth). We need to alert the school, he won’t be able to take the bus until he’s back on his feet. Getting an accessible bus at this stage in the school year is practically impossible and since it’s short term it’s not worth the headache. Even though CPS was already back in session, we kept Aleck home the day after he got his cast on, we wanted to be sure that he was comfortable in the cast, we didn’t want a repeat of the summer of 2018 (see blog post here). Craig went to the school that Friday, good thing they were in session, and prepared Aleck’s SECA (special education classroom assistant), teacher, and school staff for how he was going to look as a student in class.

Sharing the news with friends and family we joked, we laughed, we said, “eh, we got this, this is a blip in the radar.” Or we said, “par for our course around here.” And when I put Aleck to bed the first night in his cast and he was thrashing and his body was super unhappy, I reached into the medicine cabinet and gave him his dose of Valium leftover from summer of 2018, to help his body settle into its new normal. With tears in his eyes, Aleck said to me, “mommy, you’ve never had a cast, you’ve never broken a bone, you don’t know what it feels like.” To which I responded, “you’re right Aleck, I’ve never broken a bone or had a cast and I don’t know what it feels like. But I have taken care of you in a cast many times and I know what you feel like when you are in a cast.” It took him a minute but he accepted my answer with a smile. We figured that between serial castings, surgeries, and breaks he’s had about 22 different casts on his body in his 8 years of life, that’s a lot of practice giving sponge baths.

That weekend I didn’t sleep a wink. A terrifying idea took hold of my entire body and I just couldn’t shake it. What if Aleck really couldn’t be comfortable in school, what if asking his SECA to lift and carry Aleck onto the toilet was asking too much. What happens when he has to poop at school? Will he be able to go to his after school clubs? Someone has to be with him for that to happen, the teacher can’t stop what they are doing and carry Aleck down the hall to the nearest restroom. How will he write? Will he be able to get to his desk? He’s got this one leg sticking straight out, will he be able to sit comfortably at the lunch table? A friend of ours had this happen to her son and he had to be home for a few weeks with a tutor so he could stay on top of his schoolwork. If Aleck is home for three weeks we will all lose our minds, we have to get him to school.

On Monday morning we went in early and met with his SECA, the teacher, and our case manager. We practiced carrying him to the bathroom and tried different tabletops in the classroom which would fit the height of the wheelchair. In a separate bag, we packed a large waterproof pad to lay down on the ground so that Aleck’s pants and underpants could be removed before putting him on the toilet, and then lay him back down to get him dressed. We also threw in a wet bag and a few extra pairs of underpants. With the school staff, we discussed pick-up and drop-off, where we should park so we would be close to the school. Aleck barely saw us leave the classroom, he was ready to be back with his buddies.

It’s funny because Aleck’s IEP made sure that we have our resources in place for Aleck to succeed, even with a broken femur. Aleck’s size makes it doable to pick him up when needed. My parents were over and my mom commented on my workout regimen asking me how much I lift these days, my dad answered, “well, Aleck is about 50 lbs plus the cast, so 55 lbs, right Lynn?” And I answered, “yes, multiple times a day.” If Aleck was a bigger kid or if he didn’t already have a SECA and a wheelchair, this process would have been much more painful, I don’t know what we would have done otherwise.

This past Tuesday Aleck got his cast off and we were so excited we promised him a sushi dinner in celebration. Unfortunately, it was a mediocre celebration. Aleck is 75% healed and his doctor doesn’t want him weight bearing for another two weeks. We have to go back then and get the green light to start putting Aleck on his feet. Instead of a cast, he has an immobilizer brace that we can easily remove for baths and bedtime. Digging into our maguro it was hard not to feel a bit defeated. Five weeks of immobility is basically the summer of 2018 all over again. This no longer feels like a blip on the radar, it feels like recovering from major surgery. And even though Craig and I have been hitting the gym hard so we can continue to care for Aleck without hesitation, it would be nice not to have to carry him to the bathroom every morning, or to the breakfast table, or down the 6 steps to the garage. Of course, Aleck was very disappointed, everyone at school waiting to see him out of his chair again. He had a complete meltdown Wednesday morning as I tried to explain that he didn’t need the brace for his foot since he wouldn’t be weight-bearing. We both sat on the couch and had a good cry. Then he practiced what he was going to say to his classmates with an upbeat happy voice. Moaning to one of my friends she said how all of this will make him stronger, and I cut her off immediately to say, “Yeah, well, what about my liquor, can you make that stronger? Or my weed, stronger weed? This mama needs a vacation.”

Funny enough we are set to go on vacation in a couple of weeks down to Florida. Aleck has been looking forward to this for months. We will have the chair, we will have the walker, and it’s going to be interesting since we have no idea what kind of physical condition he’ll be in at that point. What can you do, right? What we always do; just keep moving forward, keep plastering that smile on our faces, and keep trying not to kill each other in the process.