It was Monday night after school. The weather was nice, and Riley and Rowan wanted to play outside (the twins). They got wrestling in the front yard ... a big thanks to their father for introducing them to the love of WWE. I had the window open a crack to let some of that fresh spring air into the house. I could hear giggling drifting in through the window. The giggling then became replace by screaming... "Oh my foot..... Oh my foot".
Rowan had fallen onto the outside of Riley's foot. My Riley has very low pain tolerance and so I always use a grain of caution when assessing Riley's injuries. I brought her in the house, propped the foot up on a pillow, gave her some children's Tylenol and iced the foot. An hour later I asked her how the foot was... "It still really hurts." Off we went to our nearest local hospital when Christopher got home from work.
We arrived at the hospital at 6:30 p.m. We had brought books and Riley's tablet, we were prepared. After three hours we had still not been taken in to see a doctor. I pushed Riley in the wheelchair over to the desk to see if there would be much more wait, the nurse told us in a polite voice that it would "only" be another half hour or so. HALF AN HOUR MORE! I am pretty sure that our medical system is broken... but that's for another blog another time. We finally did see a doctor who was lovely. She sent us off to X-Ray (something that in my opinion should have been done as soon as we came in and would have saved a lot of time). The X-Ray came back, and there appeared to be no break. The really super nice doctor told us that it wasn't right that a child could not bear weight on her foot, if it didn't get better to come back in a week. Sometimes with children breaks don't always show up on an X-Ray right away. At 1:15 a.m. we arrived home.
All week Riley was on crutches. She still could not put any weight on that foot. It just wasn't right. I got her to try to put weight on it every day, but she just couldn't. Sunday afternoon I drove to Kingston, Ontario to the big university hospital. It was time to bring in the big guns. This time I had barely finished the paperwork when Riley was called in. We didn't even have time to look at a magazine that we had brought before we saw the doctor. Again, luck was with us because he was really nice. He sent Riley off for another X-Ray. This X-Ray came back again showing no break. he also told us that it wasn't normal for a child to not be able to bear weight. He thankfully referred us to a pediatric orthopedist. It had taken us less than an hour to see a doctor, and get an X-Ray. The doctor told me that we were just lucky, normally it's a much longer wait time.
Yesterday (only three days after seeing the ER doctor) afternoon Riley and I went into Kingston to see the pediatric orthopedist. Because it is a teaching hospital we saw a resident first. He poked and prodded at Riley's foot "Does it hurt when I touch here? How about here?" Her response "no, no YESSSSSSSSSSS". We then saw the doctor, a really nice lady (we were having really great luck with really nice doctors). She felt Riley's foot. I told her that it was swollen, not horribly, but it was swollen. The doctor nodded. "There is a difference in the two X-Ray's. The second one showed a small buckle right where Riley is complaining of the pain." The bone was cracked in two places. She needed a cast.
Off we went to get it casted. Casts have come a long way since the heavy white plaster ones that they had in my day. The new fiberglass casts come in a rainbow of colours. Riley selected purple... her most favourite colour. The girl who does the casting was amazing with Riley. We left the hospital with a purple cast and a little girl on crutches. We stopped off to buy silver markers so that everyone could sign her cast.
I knew that something wasn't right with Riley's foot. I am not a doctor, nor do I have any medical training. I am just a mother. Riley knew that there was something that wasn't right with her foot. We just had to be persistent. It took a lot of steps, but we found out was wrong, and now little girl can begin to heal
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