Natalie's Arm: A Very Minor Fracture

Last night, Natalie fell at the play area at the mall (which our pediatrician calls "the germ pit"). It was a pretty minor fall. She was jumping off an object about 18 inches high, but didn't quite stick the landing and tripped, landing with her left arm extended. For the most part, she's as tough as nails, so when she wanted to climb into Mommy's lap and stay here, holding her wrist, we knew something was wrong. So we took her to a new urgent care center near the mall and found out that she had a very minor fracture near her left wrist. The x-ray below -- which the urgent care center gave to us on CD-ROM -- shows the fracture, called a "buckle" fracture. It appears in the x-ray as a little bump of the right edge of the bone. As the doctor explained it, kids' bones are pretty soft, and this is more like a crease than a crack. It should heal without any problem. We'll follow up with an orthopedist just to be sure.

Natalie has a splint on her arm now and may get a cast from the orthopedist. She woke up once last night crying, but with a little tylenol, she went right back to sleep. It's going to be interesting getting her through the basic daily routine with one arm. I'm not sure what we'll do about school on Monday if she can't figure out how to go to the bathroom independently.

The urgent care center, incidentally, was awesome. Our local emergency room is famous for 4-hour waits on Saturday nights, but the urgent care center got us registered, x-rayed, examined, splinted, re-examined and discharged in 30 minutes. And we didn't feel rushed at all; they just didn't waste any time. We were in the waiting room for about 2 minutes and went from there straight to x-ray. From x-ray we went to the exam room. The doctor walked in two minutes later and had already read the x-rays. And it went on like that, with each person being cheerful, empathetic to Natalie, and happy to answer questions. And it was a smaller co-pay than the Emergency Room!