Cast Off!

Last picture with the cast!

Jessica's cast came off yesterday! The appointment went about as expected; a long wait (over an hour) in the waiting room, Jessica crying the second we walked into the cast room and the entire time the technician took the cast off, and Jessica shrieking and flailing while they did her x-rays. She was so exhausted from all the stress and crying that she fell asleep on my lap while we waited for the results.

(Picture from my phone)

The x-rays confirmed that she had a small fracture in her wrist. The doctor said she should be fine and that was it! We were sent home.

No more cast!

Jessica has been doing great since the cast came off. She's been using her wrist and is able to crawl, although you can tell she's using it lightly (probably from weakened muscles). She has a bit of redness/scratches from the cast but she doesn't seem to mind!

Sometimes she points at her arm and says "boo boo", so I ask her how it is or if it's all better and she says yes. Such a relief! Now I just have to stop overreacting every time she falls, fearing that she'll hurt herself again.

Solution: Another Cast

Jessica's follow-up appointment was at the Children's Outpatient Center with the same doctor who took care of Emily when she fractured her foot. They removed the hard cast, examined her arm for a bit and decided to get x-rays done. The x-rays were still inconclusive and since the doctors couldn't determine if Jessica was still in pain (she cried no matter what they did), they decided to err on the side of caution and put another cast on her. This time they put a soft cast (lighter and more comfortable than the traditional hard ones). We go back in two weeks.

While this is not the outcome I was expecting today, I just have to trust that the doctors know best. The fact that Jessica couldn't bear weight on her arm after her fall, they said, was a likely indication of a fracture in her elbow.

Of course Jessica hated every minute of her appointment -- from removing the cast (the loud saw really scared her!), to more x-rays, to getting the new cast. She was very happy to leave the hospital and has been herself since we got home. Too bad we'll have to do it all over again in two weeks.

Weekly Update - Cast/Checkup/Painting/Gardening

Living with a Cast. Thanks to everyone for your kind words and thoughts about Jessica's injury. Her cast comes off tomorrow! She's actually doing really well with it. She points to it often and says "boo boo". She can do almost anything she did before, including getting up to standing, climbing stairs, drinking from her sippy cup, and playing with her toys. She's becoming quite proficient at drawing and using utensils with her left hand. Wearing the cast has also encouraged her walking since walking is easier than crawling at the moment. Some things I'm sure she's missing are reading books and playing in the sink. What's nice for me is that bath time has been simplified -- she's back in her baby tub (with a plastic bag around her cast) which is much better for keeping her safe and contained.

15-Month Checkup. Speaking of Jessica, last week she had her 15-month checkup. She weighs 19 lbs 7 oz, is 30 in. tall, and has a head circumference of 46 cm. I can't remember the percentiles, but she's still small and tall. She's right on track with all her milestones. She didn't like her shots one bit, but other than that she was pretty content, especially when it was just me and her in the doctor's office (she wanted to explore/touch everything!).

Artist At Work. Emily loves painting wooden objects! It started a month ago when I bought some wooden frames at Michael's for $1 each. Emily loved painting them and has them proudly displayed in her room (with pictures she picked out). It was such a success that I went back to Michael's and got all kinds of things to paint, including a bird house, Halloween masks, her birthday frames, etc. Emily has been painting up a storm!

The Truth About Gardening. In my last Weekly Updates post, I mentioned the bountiful amount of home-grown tomatoes we've been eating. The truth is I've been extremely lazy about my garden this year and it shows. I often forget to water it -- many of the plants are yellow or dying. My cucumber plant is attacking (growing on) my tomato plant and I've done nothing about it. Despite my cucumber plant growing like mad, it's only produced two cucumbers so far (and the girls won't eat them -- they prefer store-bought). I'd love to enjoy all of my juicy red tomatoes, but half of them are being eaten by a chipmunk. The other half are being plucked by Emily (which she loves), but often before they are ready so we end up eating orange tomatoes. Gardening is a lot of work and sadly sometimes it doesn't seem worth the effort!

Second Baby, Second Cast

At bedtime last night Jessica was sitting in her rocking chair and did what she always does: climbed down to read books on the floor. But on her way down she lost her balance, fell heavily on her right side, and immediately started crying hard. I was pretty nervous right away because it was not a big fall by any means, but her reaction was big. I tried calming her down, but when I placed her on my bed she cried more and struggled to crawl.

I panicked and brought her downstairs for Steve to check her out. He calmed her down by reading books and she didn't seem to be in pain anymore. She was able to stand and flick through books. But as soon as she started crawling, we saw the problem: she couldn't bear weight on her right hand/arm. Her arm buckled any time she tried to put it down. An absolutely heart-wrenching sight. Feeling the déjà-vu of Emily's foot injury, I decided to take her to the ER that night.

My mom met me there around 7:45pm. The following three hours included a lot of waiting. Jessica was surprisingly content for the first half -- talking, eating, playing, and using her injured hand with ease. It was only when she tried to crawl that she would stop and hold/point to her wrist.

Snacking with Mommy...

Reading magazines...

Playing with the awesome hospital toy

Halfway through the waiting we finally saw a doctor. She looked at Jessica for about two minutes and decided to order x-rays. There was a lot more waiting involved and Jessica went from cute and content to dead tired and hysterical. Meanwhile patients with much more serious injuries came and went. After failing miserably to soothe Jessica, crying a few tears myself, and convincing myself not to leave, I got my mom to grab the stroller out of the car so I could help Jessica go to sleep. As soon as she was calm and almost asleep, it was time for her x-rays. Lots of tears and confusion from my poor little girl.

When the doctor came back, she said she didn't see anything on the x-ray but that they would cast her arm anyway, just to be safe. She said that with children that young, since their bones are small and still growing, it's often hard to see things on x-rays (just like how they never actually saw fracture/break in Emily's leg/foot!). So they treat sprains like a break. I held her while they put her cast on, then we left the hospital at 11:00pm.

Home at last!

The night was not as rough as I had anticipated -- just one wake-up. She woke up for the day at 7:00am and was quite upset about the giant thing on her arm that she couldn't take off. She's a bit more used to it now and just gets frustrated when she tries to do things that require both hands.

We have an appointment to remove the cast on Tuesday next week... Then we go from there! It seems pretty wild to me that both my girls have had casts already when no one in my family or Steve's family have ever had one! Here's hoping these will be our only cast experiences.

 

Weekly Update - Teething/Jump&Climb/Injury

More Teething, Less Sleeping. This week was definitely a bad one for sleep, and as usual Jessica's teeth were to blame. We had skipped naps, early wake-ups, struggles getting her to sleep, and a few nights with three wake-ups. All in a day's night's work!

Jump and Climb! Emily's new favourite activity: jumping! Jessica's new favourite activity: climbing! Emily is loving her new skills (which gymnastics has helped to develop) and practices them on a daily basis. Jessica is our little climber (Emily never was); she's climbing on boxes, books and small chairs, and she adores climbing all the way up a flight of stairs by herself. Way to go girls!

Sliced Finger. Don't you just hate it when you're scrambling to get lunch ready, the kids are hungry, there's a million things to do... and then you cut your finger? I'm sporting three band-aids around my finger after today's little accident and I'm pretty sure I've sliced part of my finger off. A trip to the doctor's might be in order for tomorrow...

Weekly Update - Accident/Tags/Videos/Mama

Tooth-Brushing Accident. Last night Emily was standing on her stepping stool brushing her teeth, while I stood beside her holding Jessica. Suddenly from the corner of my eye I saw Emily fall off the stool, hit her chin on the counter, and land face first on the bathroom floor. It was a horrific thing to watch; the kind of thing you just replay over and over in your head. I put Jessica down on the floor, picked Emily up and held her while she cried. Steve ran upstairs and comforted Emily until she felt better. She cheered up by sitting on her Daddy's lap and watching a few Caspar Babypants videos. Other than a minor cut in her mouth, she's totally fine! She was in a good mood today and got right back up on that stepping stool to brush her teeth tonight. Tough girl!

Operation Remove All Tags. Our sensitive girl has discovered that shirt tags are extremely uncomfortable. The side tag on one of Emily's shirts irritated her so much that she started scratching her side -- causing scratch marks, a rash, and a vicious cycle of discomfort! So, with scissors and a seam ripper in tow, I've been slowly but surely removing all tags from her clothing.

Mommy Take Home Video. Emily is obsessed with home videos. If I pull out my camera to take a picture, she insists that I take a home video too. Over the last two months I've recorded over 7GB of videos! The funniest thing is that each video I take goes about the same way. While I'm setting up the camera Emily repeats: "Mommy take home video. Mommy take home video right now." Then she says: "Mommy say 'what are you doing there?'" so that she can tell/show me what she's doing. Once she's done, she promptly says: "Watch it. Watch it right now." And we proceed to watch the video we just took. A perfect example:

Episode 11: The Home Videos

Saying Mama. So as to not exclude Jessica from this post, here's a short video I took of her babbling. Love!

The Cast Comes Off

We took Emily's cast off today! She did a bit of walking this morning (with the cast on) so we were pretty excited to see if that meant her foot was all better.

Walking with cast & Daddy

Jessica checking out her sister's walking...

We took the cast off this afternoon after Emily woke up from her nap. It was fairly easy to do -- just peel off the end and unwrap the entire thing.

Bye bye cast!

Emily watched some Sesame Street videos with Daddy while I did the unwrapping. It was pretty fun and luckily Emily didn't seem to mind it.

Almost done!

Emily was very hesitant to try standing once the cast was off, but she did eventually stand in her bed without any problems. Yay! She then took a couple of steps on the carpet with Steve, but quickly wanted to stop. Hopefully everything has healed and she'll feel comfortable walking again soon. Otherwise it's back to the doctor next week!

Tears of Joy

What we initially thought was going to be another rough day turned out to be quite wonderful. Yesterday Emily woke up cranky, but after a little rest she surprised us all by being her usual sweet self! She was chatty, happy, eating, and we spent the rest of the day playing and having fun (rather than crying and lying in bed). We even went out to run a few errands and Emily seemed to enjoy getting some fresh air.

In order to celebrate our lovely day, we decided to have a "picnic" in the living room for dinner (inspired by Jennifer). It was a huge success! Emily had a blast sitting and eating on a blanket.

The most exciting part about yesterday was that Emily stood (without pain) for the first time since her fall! She was riding her rocking horse and just got up on her feet. She was so proud of herself (as were we!) and after we said "Look Emily, you're standing! No problem!", she repeated "No problem!" the rest of the evening. Once she knew she could stand, she wanted to try walking. So I held her hands and we walked together all the way from the office to the kitchen. It was such a wonderful moment!

We walked to the kitchen because the first thing Emily wanted to do once she could stand was help Daddy with the dishes!! (Which is good because our kitchen was a total mess).

She may have done a little too much too soon, because a while later she mentioned that her boo boo hurt. We'll try to take things nice and slow from now on. Anyways, all throughout the day Steve and I looked at each other with the "I think I'm going to cry (of happiness)" face. Everything Emily said and everything she did was just so her -- not the sick girl we've been taking care of for the past couple of weeks.

This morning Emily's just having a few "bum issues" (understandable since she's lacking exercise and a varied diet). But other than that, things are really looking up.

We have, however, formed two bad habits since Emily's sickness started: watching lots of tv/videos (sometimes the only thing that would keep her calm) and not eating at the table (what was important was that she ate!). So over the next few days we'll have to work towards getting back to the way things were.

Soft Cast & Stomach Flu?

An update on how we're doing:

Emily's appointment with the orthopedist was ok. She had more x-rays done and surprisingly, they showed nothing again. Two weeks ago the doctors presumed she had a toddler's fracture on her tibia, but if that were the case they would have seen healing bone tissue on the x-ray yesterday. Since there were no signs of new bone tissue, the orthopedist poked around at Emily's feet again and asked us a few questions. She concluded that Emily's injury must be in her foot (rather than her leg), but didn't have an x-ray to confirm that. Instead of doing another x-ray, the doctor just suggested putting on a soft cast for 10 days, then going from there. If Emily's still not better when the cast comes off, we see the doctor again in 2 weeks.

So far Emily's not loving the cast. Yesterday she didn't even want to crawl with it and just wanted to be held/carried everywhere. She's a little more used to it now, but she's not showing any interest in trying to walk/stand.

As far as Emily's sickness goes, we've had some high highs and some low lows. When we saw our family doctor for the second time (on Wednesday), he did his usual checks and still didn't see anything. Emily really objected to having her mouth checked so he didn't get a good look (again!). He did confirm there were no signs of strep and then said that he thinks Emily had/has a stomach bug. We reluctantly accepted the diagnosis, but thankfully Emily started feeling much better when we got home. Her appetite returned, she started eating/drinking again, and was in a much better mood.

Unfortunately, this "quick turnaround" didn't last, and yesterday she cried/fussed and didn't eat anything for the entire second half of the day.
 
After reviewing the facts over and over, I have to say that I totally disagree with our doctor's diagnosis! Emily's had no fever, no diarrhea, and no one else has caught "the bug". I think the doctor was focusing too much on the fact that she was vomiting on Tuesday morning and not enough on the fact that her mouth hurts. Sure, it might not be strep, but there's something there. She has complained of pain in her mouth for over a week and it's been so bad that it's really affected her eating. I honestly believe that she threw up because she had barely eaten anything in days (you know that nauseous feeling you get when you're starving/dehydrated?).

So after doing some research, Steve and I are under the impression that she has a viral or bacterial infection in her mouth (e.g. canker sore). Hopefully it's viral because then it should clear up on its own. For now we wait and hope that she gradually gets better. If not, then another trip to the doctor will be necessary :(. I only wish we had thought of this sooner so that I could have emphasized it at our previous appointments.

Needless to say this has been an extremely stressful experience for Emily (and her parents)! She's had three doctor's appointments in four days and has cried before/during each one. She's doing well this morning -- let's hope it stays that way.

So there you have it. Two basically unresolved problems, two exhausted parents, and one poor little girl. We're so ready for things to be back to normal again!!

A Long Day at the Hospital

We took Emily to the Children's Outpatient Centre today to get her foot checked out. We arrived at the hospital at 9:00am this morning and didn't get back home until 3:30pm. It's been a long and tiring day. It was certainly stressful for Emily most of all, since any time we walked into a new room (which happened a lot) and any time we met a new person (which also happened a lot), Emily cried in fear. She basically cried all day, didn't eat much, and didn't nap either. My poor, sweet girl.

We started with the typical triage-area wait, followed by an evaluation by the triage nurse. We then waited to see a doctor. A resident came in and asked some questions and poked around at Emily's legs/feet. Although Emily didn't react (in pain) to the prodding, the doctor was concerned when she saw Emily struggling to walk. She decided to order x-rays just to be safe.

This is "Ray" -- We got him in the x-ray waiting room.

He cheered Emily up for about 2 minutes :).

Only one parent was allowed into the x-ray room with Emily, so Steve went with her while I stayed with Jessica (who was, luckily, sleeping soundly in the stroller). It was heartbreaking though, because I could hear her crying and screaming "Mommy!".

We did lots more waiting before we saw the doctor again to get news on the x-ray. This time we saw a pediatrician too, and both doctors said they couldn't see anything on the x-ray. They mentioned the possibility of a "toddler's fracture", which might not be visible on an x-ray, so they wanted us to get an orthopedic consult. It was noon by this point and our appointment with the orthopedist was scheduled for 1:00pm.

We had a quick lunch at the hospital and distracted Emily with the books, drawing board, and puzzle that we brought. Then we went back to the waiting room and waited. And waited. And waited. Emily was exhausted and just lay on Steve's lap, with her pacifiers, watching some random movie on tv.

We finally met with the orthopedist at 3:00pm. She talked with us, poked Emily's legs/feet, and examined her x-rays.

My baby's leg!

The doctor didn't confirm or deny a toddler's fracture, but she said we had three options: get a soft cast, get a boot, or do nothing, all of which she said were acceptable options. We chose the boot. They put her boot on, scheduled us for a follow-up appointment in two weeks, and we were finally out of there at 3:15pm.

The boot

I would have loved to get a picture of Emily wearing the boot, but within 5 minutes of being home she wanted it off ;) (The doctor said that was ok and that she only has to wear it if she wants to walk).

I have to mention that Jessica was a SUPER champ the whole day. She took two long naps in her stroller (without fuss), ate, and played well during those 6 long hours at the hospital. 

The girls went to bed early and now it's time for me to get some rest too!