Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Ollie's broken leg

I don't want to say everything happens for a reason, because if we could do it all over again, I would definitely choose for Ollie to NOT break his leg. However, I have seen some good things come out of this fiasco.
I can still remember it very well. It happened almost six weeks ago. It was Thursday night. The busiest homework night of the week. The weather had been beautiful. The kids had been playing outside ever since they came home from school. Josh had worked on the garage and I had taken a much needed hour walk. Dinner had been eaten and dishes put in the dishwasher. The boys had finished their homework. Tatum was tired and already headed to bed. It was eight o'clock. Ollie headed to the shower while I gave Van a practice spelling test. Josh was downstairs on the computer and Petey studying for his spelling test next.
Van does great on his test and we hear Ollie get out of the shower. I tell Van to jump in the shower next and start to give Petey his spelling test.That's when I heard Ollie yelling. "Mommy help!" Help Mommy Help!!!!"
I tell Petey to hold on, I have to run up and check on Ollie. He is laying in the middle of the floor, on his back, both of his legs pulled up to his chest. When I get there, he tells me that he has a boo boo and asks me to kiss it. Ollie points to the bottom of his foot. I kiss he bottom of his foot, not seeing anything wrong.
He stops crying and I think everything is ok. I try to stand him up on his foot and he falls straight down. I know something is very wrongs and yell for Josh. I move Ollie to the bed and there I see that around Ollie's leg is swollen. I call my dad to come over and watch the rest of the kids and Josh and I take off to the hospital with Ollie.We reached the hospital by eight thirty. We carried him in and the hospital staff worked to get him back to the doctor as fast as they could.


 Ollie in the ER

We still didn't know what had happened for sure. Ollie told us that he fell. He told the doctors and the nurses that he fell. The doctor looked at Ollie's leg and said that it was definitely broke.
The nurse put an IV in Ollie's hand. Two tries and two hands later, she got it. Then she gave Ollie some morphine and he calmed down and went right to sleep.
I was so very proud of Ollie. We had told the hospital staff that Ollie had autism. Ollie worked well with everyone. He answered their questions and listened to them. Ollie was in lots of pain and her really never cried. He would tell me that it hurts. "ouch, ouch it hurts" he would repeat over and over but no real yelling or screaming
Next we headed to get an xray of his leg.this went very well too. His leg was not as broken as bad as the doctor first thought. They decided to put Ollie's leg in a splint and send him home for the night and he could get a cast put on in the morning. 
Having he splint but on was very painful for Ollie, but again he did a great job. Then he got to leave. He told the nurse he was happy to leave and that he was going to sleep in mommy and daddy's room. The hospital gave Ollie a little blue teddy bear that he named Lumpy and a Spongebob magnetic book.
Ollie made it through the night fairly well in not much pain.
The next morning we took Ollie to get his cast put on. Ollie did a great job getting his cast put on too. He choose an orange cast. I know he was in lots of pain when they put the cast on, and he tried to move around from the pain, there was no crying and screaming, just a lot of "ouch it hurts" and I heard some Spanish in there too.Thank you Diego. ( so now I know when Ollie is upset he starts spouting out Spanish.)
Ollie was happy to leave the office and seemed to be doing much better with his cast on and seemed to be in very little pain.
I should say something about medicine here too. Ollie will not take liquid medicine. If I need to give him Tylenol, I have to give him the chewable pills, but he won't chew them. I have to place them at the back of his throat, he swallows and takes a drink of water. This process would go pretty smooth, until one time he gagged. Then he decided he didn't like it anymore and there is a little struggle now. After the first couple of days, Ollie did not want any Tylenol, at all.  He was to take Tylenol every six hours and Tylenol with codeine if pain worsened. Well, Ollie never had any of the codeine at all and basically went without medication. I think he may have a high tolerance for pain. If Ollie whimpered around that his leg hurt, I would ask him if he wanted medicine, he would always answer 'NO!' I would say "you would rather your leg hurt then take medicine?" and he would answer "yes!"
Ollie has seven weeks in a cast and he has almost six weeks down.
During this time, I have noticed Ollie talking a lot more. At first, Ollie was very immobile and if he didn't talk or ask for want he wanted, he didn't get it.Even after he started getting around more on his own, Ollie is still talking more. He has even started talking more in speech at school. Actually I think he has just started talking more at school. It may be a small step, he is not a social butterfly yet, but he is talking more and more and I am so very proud of him. I am proud of the way he has handled this whole thing.
My whole heart is filled with pride.











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