Colin went to visit the orthopaedist today, and he came home with leg cast that will be his close and personal friend for the next three weeks. I don't feel 100% comfortable with the diagnosis since the doctor spent half a nanosecond looking at his x-ray, but then again the doctor is the expert, right?
Since the Urgent Care clinic is connected to our hospital, they could pull up his x-ray in the computer system immediately, and display it on a large wall monitor. I think that is just the coolest...I'm of the opinion that every doctor should be connected to a network, and that every teeny tiny scrap of your medical history should be accessible in a database, so that the information a doctor has is as up-to-date as it gets... Anyway.. Off track here... So he glanced at the x-ray and said it was an easy fix - just put him in an above-the-knee cast for three weeks and he should be just fine. He was not concerned about the growth plate at all. I guess I should feel relieved, but I feel a little apprehensive..
So Colin got a cast put on his leg. First the nurse removed the rest of his splint (pictured above, courtesy of photographer Colin), then put on a long 'sock', wrapped his leg in some kind of squishy material - similar to that thin packing material you use to wrap fragile stuff in, and then used a wrap that hardens within minutes. Colin was not exactly the best patient...he was pretty squirmy. The nurse gave Colin a Batman action figure that had an exact replica of the type of leg cast he was getting.
Batman helped Colin control his wiggles somewhat, but then Colin was still wiggling as he played with Batman. There were other characters, so out came Spider-Man in his leg cast, Darth Vader in his arm cast, along with Captain America. Luckily these two 'broke' their left arms, so they could still fight each other right-handed. :). We all tried in our best Darth Vader voices to amuse Colin...
"Colin...(Vader breath)...I am your father..."
Colin had about 15 color and design choices for his cast, and so he immediately chose 'safety orange'. A very appropriate choice for this boy! Dean tried to steer him towards OU red, of course. The casting from start to finish took under 15 minutes (!), and we were done. It is a waterproof cast, so he can shower, bathe, SWIM...and it is supposed to dry out in about an hour. I don't think we will attempt the swimming thing (he would sink like a rock) but it is good to know I don't have to give him a sponge bath for the next three weeks.
All afternoon Colin got increasingly mobile, hobbling all around. You can hear his cast scrape along the floor, so I can tell when he is moving around, which is nice. I can't believe he is already putting weight on it, but apparently it doesn't seem to bother him because he didn't complain of pain even once all day. Tough kid!
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