Unlucky

Poor Riley is one unlucky kid...we took him for a follow up appointment with the surgeon last week and the x-rays did not look good.  The bones had moved 25 degrees since his surgery so we had to take him back for another follow up appointment and more x-rays on Friday.  Unfortunately, the bones had moved even more and the pins were completely dis-lodged.  The surgeon said they don't know why it happens sometimes but it does -- in only 1% of patients!  So we had to get him scheduled for another surgery Friday afternoon to reset the bones again...poor kid had to go through it again and was a real trooper!  He freaked out when they put him to sleep and that meant he was still freaking out when he woke up and was in a state of delirium.  It took about 30 minutes to calm him down and he was complaining about how bad his arm hurt.  I was worried because he didn't complain much about the pain after his first surgery.  But by the time we got home, he was back to his old energetic self.  He even wanted to try on his Halloween costume I let him pick out earlier in the day to try to get his mind off the surgery!  By Saturday he was running races in the backyard against Sully and Cody.  And today he was playing with his squirt gun and pretending he was a secret agent.  I asked him to pose and show off his new blue cast...

This is his secret agent pose.

 

The challenging part about the next eight weeks will be keeping Riley from re-injuring himself because the cast has definitely not slowed him down much!

 

Luckily the cast will be off right in time for snowboarding season...Riley is pretty excited and already practicing his moves!

 

He looks like he knows what he's doing even though he's never been on a snowboard before!  We bought this for him for his birthday this year but with such a mild winter in Ohio, he never even got to use it!

 

And not to be shown up by his brother, Sully had to give it a try too!

 

It was a rough start to the weekend but Riley has once again adapted well to the situation.  We're hoping the next follow up appointment with the surgeon in a week goes well.

Broken

Life lesson:  Always wear clean underwear to school.  You never know when you're going to fall off a zipline, break both bones in your arm, and require emergency surgery to reset it before they put the cast on.  Yes, this is poor Riley's left arm...luckily he is right handed.

He was such a trooper yesterday.  The accident happened at 11:20AM at school and we took him to the emergency room immediately for an assessment.  They consulted with a pediatric orthopedic surgeon and sent us to another hospital across town for surgery.  The surgery was at 6PM, done by 7PM and it took us quite a while to wake him up.  After about two and a half hours he was conscious enough to go home.  We finally got home at 10:30PM after what I'm sure is Riley's longest day ever.  This is Riley in good spirits (thanks to some pain meds!) waiting for surgery.  Thank goodness for Cody grabbing the iPad on his way to meet us at the hospital -- what a lifesaver to keep Riley's mind off his arm and the pain!

He requested a dark green cast and let mommy sign it first...then he requested I write his name on it too!

 

He's doing pretty well today...in a little bit of pain but not unmanageable.  We're trying to get him used to doing things one handed...even easy things like pulling up your pants after going to the bathroom are quite challenging with only one hand.  They put pins in to stabilize the bones and those will stay in for three weeks.  Then they will take them out and put a different cast on -- hopefully one that only goes to right below the elbow instead of just above.  He will have the cast on for a total of eight weeks.  He should get it off just in time for turkey day.  Riley has been quite the big boy throughout this whole ordeal...he even told me he's done with ziplines.  Smart move...at least for now!