The Excessive, Exhaustive, Ridiculously Long Ankle Saga

I was going to make this a really quick post, but Brynnie-Pie is pretty loved and we've gotten a lot of questions about her and how she's been doing, so I thought I'd try to do this story justice.

On Wednesday the 23rd I was getting ready to go to Young Women's and Brynn fell down the stairs. She screamed for quite a long time and was really clingy, but I figured she's tough and was fine. To calm her down, I let her sit up on the counter and help me prepare dinner. When I was done I put her back down on the ground on her feet. She screamed, then collapsed and curled up in a little ball and cried and cried, so I knew something was wrong. Marty was in Mesa that night and I waited for him to get home before taking her to twilight pediatrics. Brynn was really guarding her left leg, so it was hard for the nurse to get a good sense of where the actual injury was. She told us it most likely a sprain, but if Brynn still wouldn't put any pressure on it the next morning we should take an order she gave us for a hip to ankle x-ray to a lab and get her checked out.

The next morning Brynn still cried every time I wouldn't put her down and wouldn't put any pressure on it, so we got her x-rayed. The next couple of days was a frustrating and complicated mess of holding the medical staff's hand trying to get the x-rays from the lab to the pediatrician, and getting anyone to call us back was impossible. Thursday, just as the offices were closing, the pediatrician told us to come back in. That was a frustrating visit, because after getting my little girl up from her nap to take her in, all they said was that it was a sprain and told us how to treat a sprain. Really? You couldn't have told us that over the phone? You already told us how to treat a sprain! But apparently the pediatrician didn't see the actual x-rays, just the results.

On Friday as the pediatrician's office was closing, they said they were finally able to get the lab to fax over the actual x-rays and somehow the lab missed the ankle, which is what I told them I thought it was. So they told us to treat it as a sprain and take her back to the lab Monday (free of charge, thank goodness) and they would do another x-ray.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to keep an energetic little toddler who can't walk happy by building forts, trying to come up with creative art projects, getting new movies, etc. Here is Brynn posing in the fort.

This is how she was getting around:

Sunday Brynn and I both got sick, probably from the many doctor visits, so that made it even more fun to carry around an almost three-year-old and chubby baby constantly.

Monday rolled around and it was the same old thing. Despite my numerous phone calls, I couldn't get the pediatrician to fax an x-ray order to the lab until just before it closed, which was obviously when Brynn was napping. Poor, sick, injured thing. We didn't hear back from anyone until late Tuesday when they told us the results were still negative but to treat it as a sprain (ever heard that one?) and if she was still limping we should take her in to a pediatric orthopedic. We told the doctor that she wasn't limping, she hadn't walked for almost a week now and still refused to put any amount of pressure on it, so they told us to make an appointment.

We got an appointment for a pediatric orthopedic (that was almost an hour away, sigh) for Thursday, 8 days after she fell. My brother walked around on a REALLY broken foot for nine days, and my mom had said a long time ago that if I go for more days than that I get the good mom award. I sure didn't think I'd come this close!

Anyway, now I have a hungry baby, so to hurry things up, the appointment was a bit of a nightmare considering my two kids who couldn't walk and the fact that we left at 8:30 a.m. and didn't get back until 1:30 p.m. But we found out it was a hairline fracture on her ankle and she now has a pretty pink cast. It's so minor that she only has to wear it for two weeks, but it feels so good to get Brynnie off her little red and scuffed knees and back on her feet. Mostly...she is still pretty awkward hobbling around on that cast.

She is still trying to dance with it! But she tips over a lot.

She has been such a little trooper and I am really proud of her. But I have decided to reward myself with a little break. Actually, my brother and sister-in-law are rewarding me with one - they are flying me out to Alaska! But I'll post more about that later.

That's the whole story!