Thursday, January 24, 2008

X-rays are fun?

lara's xray sticker
("Who says X-rays are fun?)

It started on Sunday. Lara wouldn't stop crying all day. It was a "I'm not well" type of cry. We thought she was teething, because she was also dribbling a lot. She cried even when I held her. I had all my tricks out to distract her and stop her from crying. Anyway, at around 5pm, I suddenly realised she was not using her left arm/hand. It became very obvious when she was holding herself up from a sitting position with one hand. She cried in pain when I touched her lower arm/hand. It didn't look like anything was broken though. I decided not to go to work the following day so I could take her to see a doctor.

I called the doctor's office at 8.30 in the morning, and of course there was nothing available that day. I pleaded with the receptionist to squeeze her in. (After 3 bouts of mastitis, I was pretty good at getting myself an appointment. The reception lady was also very nice). She said the doctor would try to see us at around 10am. We didn't get to see him until 11am. Doctor ordered x-rays of the arms because Lara's left elbow didn't turn very well. It was around 12.30pm before we did the x-rays and nearly 1pm before I had the x-ray films in hand. A short break before we headed back to the doctor's with the films.

To cut the story short, nothing showed up in the x-rays. We were told to go home and come back in a week if things don't improve. Tuesday came and went and Lara wasn't using her hand. I could see a slight improvement though - she would raise the arm just a little sometimes rather than have it hanging behind her. On Wednesday night, she could hold a cup. She's still not putting much weight on it (still use one hand to pull herself up) but we are happy with the progress so far.

I put a sticker the x-ray technician gave us on Lara's arm so we could easily tell which arm was the bad arm. Was x-rays fun? Not really. I'm just glad that Lara is OK now.

p.s. I still don’t know how Lara hurt her hand. The theory is she bruised it when she fell as she is constantly falling and getting up since she started walking. Lara couldn't crawl for a few days (it's hard to crawl with one hand). This little mishap has unexpectedly improved her walking ability!

2 comments:

Snoozen said...

Poor wee tike, hope she is better soon. Maybe it was further up her arm like her shoulder joint. Lara has just turned into that really dangerous into everything, thinks she can do more than she can, happy to walk to start then run, then CLIMB stage of toddlerhood. R and E always seem to have bumps and bruises especially from bike riding downstairs or just tumbling over their own feet! E went straight over the handlebars of her friends bike last Wednesday at a local park. It was apparently quite spectacular but I was rescuing someones daughter from venturing out into a carpark. Bruises on her shoulder, face etc. Trying to get her to have quiet play (due to head injury) after was near impossible. You love them you can just do your best to protect them but they will be monkeys!

Sophia said...

How's E now? That must hurt a lot, going over the handlebars of a bike!