Monday, March 22, 2010

Broken Bone #2

Nearly a year ago, I wrote a blog about Lexi's first broken bone. I remember being surprised that it was her, not Jake or Lizzy, who was the first to break a bone. Lexi had tripped in the parking lot after school and ended up breaking her wrist. She's done it again. Lexi has broken another bone.

Lexi had a busy day on Saturday... a volleyball game and two basketball games. During the second basketball game, she fell and landed on her finger. I could tell she was hurting, but it wasn't until after the game I realized it was her finger. The first words out of her mouth after the game (which her team lost in overtime) were "my finger hurts". I was sitting by two nurses, so I had them look at it. They said to ice it and take an Advil. They were hesitant to say more than that because when a girl on their team hurt her finger last year, they thought it was just jammed....four days later she was at the hand specialist because her finger was broken on the growth plate.

Lexi iced it faithfully on Saturday night. She didn't want to miss Sunday's games so she said she would just tape it for the games and deal with it afterwards. It was pretty bruised on Sunday morning, and after the second game on Sunday it looked pretty bad. I took her to our family doctor this morning. They did three x-rays and determined it was just a bad sprain. He instructed her to tape it and ice it for a week and if it wasn't better in seven days, to come back. By the time I got back to work, I had a message from the nurse. The doctor had second guessed himself and had a radiologist check the x-ray. Together, they decided it was indeed broken.

Lexi was not happy when I broke the news to her after school. We had to go back to the doctor and get a splint. She has to wear that for three weeks and keep it taped for another week after that. That puts us  to her birthday. I joked she will have a sore finger until she's 11. She didn't laugh.

The good news is it's a small break (obviously, if at first they didn't think it was even broken). But the bad news is, it's broken enough to mean no volleyball for three weeks, which is the rest of the season. There could be one more basketball tournament....Lexi is praying that's not for at least three weeks. She would die if her team played without her. Playing the flute will be difficult for a few weeks.... it's hard to push the correct keys with a splint on your pinky finger! But, it's important she takes care of this small break. The doctor could tell she was upset about not playing volleyball, so he explained if she lets it heal now, it will be fine in a month. However, if she hurts it again before it's healed, she will need surgery. She did not like that idea, so I think she will wear the splint and cheer her team from the sidelines.

I do feel bad for the kid. Two broken bones in two years, both on the left hand. She obviously takes after her dad, who broke several fingers playing football, as well as both legs and both arms as a kid. So far her breaks have been minor. I'm hoping they stay that way. And, like I told Lexi, it could be worse... she could have a cast. Lizzy feels bad for her big sister... she's been talking about Lexi's "poor, poor pinky"

I think she has a pretty high pain tolerance...Lexi played two basketball games on Sunday, as well as part of a game on Saturday with a broken finger. But that didn't slow her down. She played just as hard as always and played great games. The tape on her finger was the only clue that something was wrong. For the record, her team won both games and took third. And let's face it, telling people you broke your finger playing basketball is a lot less embarassing than telling them you broke your arm when you tripped in the parking lot!

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