Spica Cast

Well you may remember in my previous post I was bragging about Mason riding his bike at the age of two and a half. Well about two days after I wrote that post, Mason was on his bike and broke his femur. He is now in a spica cast...........what is a spica cast you may ask? Well the simple answer is a body cast. Our little boy is in a body cast:( It has been three weeks now, and I am pretty sure we are through the roughest part, but it was pretty rough there for a while.

It happened on a Friday, Rodney and Mason were out riding Mason’s bike. Mason's back wheel hit a rock (we think) and he lost his balance. He put his leg down to save himself, and then fell backwards on it. Rodney immediately ran to him, and thought it was okay at first. But then when he picked him up, he heard his bone cracking, and he knew it wasn't good. I was in the house with Travis when I heard Mason crying. Rodney came into the house and said "mama, we are going to have to go to the hospital," and immediately put Mason in the car. He went ahead and left, so we could get Mason there as soon as possible, and I stayed behind to pack up the things we would need for Travis.

On the way to the hospital, Rodney called me and we discussed where we should take him, the closest hospital, or if we should go ahead and go to Dell Children's Medical Center. At that point Mason had stopped crying, so we thought he couldn't be in too much pain, so the extra drive to Dell would be worth it. Well once we were at Dell we found out that either way we would have ended up there. If we would have gone to another hospital, we would have just sat in their ER for a few hours and then they would have shipped us to Dell anyway. So I got to the ER and Mason was still in his car seat which had been put on a wheel chair. Apparently when they got to the hospital, Mason did not want to be moved at all. So Rodney just picked up his car seat and put it in the wheel chair. He was in a lot of pain, and thankfully they gave him some morphine right away. Poor guy.

The four of us, waited till they took him to x-rays. That was terrible, they had to move his leg in all these directions to get the right pictures and he was just screaming. Thank goodness they were fairly quick about it, and afterwards he insisted on being put back in his car seat. I think he was scared of the hospital, and the car seat was a familiar thing that he could hold onto. At this point, I think both Rodney and I knew he had a broken leg. So we figured he would be getting a cast. But then they started telling us that Mason could have no food or drink in case he had to go into surgery. Surgery, that had never entered my head, I was freaking out about him having to be put under.

Finally they came and confirmed that he had broken his femur. The ER staff told us that he would be having surgery. I was so shocked, and just couldn’t believe that Mason was going to have to have surgery at such a young age. We then waited forever in the ER until the orthopedic staff was able to get to us. They told us that they didn’t think they were going to have to “cut” the leg, but instead they were going to put Mason in a body cast. But the body cast still required him to go under general anesthesia. Next thing I knew, we were signing consent forms, and we were we all leaving the ER to go to the operating room. I asked that Child Life be brought over to explain to Mason what was about to happen. Mason was pretty out of it, but I think they were still able to help him prepare for what was about to happen. They showed him pictures of all the rooms he was about to enter, and the mask that was going to go on his face and help him go to sleep. They also showed him pictures of casts, and told him that he would wake up with one on his leg and around his tummy. Next thing we knew, they were taking Mason away from us.

About 45 minutes later, the doctor came back and told us everything went great. She also told us that she was able to put the cast on one leg instead of both legs. Most spica casts are on both legs and around the waist. But we were lucky that our doctor had just moved here from Hopkins where they had done a study and had determined that a one legged spica cast was just as affective. She is apparently the only doctor in Austin who would have done this. I can’t imagine how much worse it would have been with both legs in a cast. Thank goodness she was on call that day.

We were then taken to our hospital room. Mason needed to stay for one night so they could make sure everything was okay. The four of us stayed in Mason’s hospital room. Unfortunately, at the same time all this was going on, we were all still recovering from the whopping cough. So I couldn’t really ask anyone to take Travis for us, because he could have gotten them sick. So he stayed with us. And we were all in an isolation room at the hospital; everyone who came in our room had to have gowns and a mask on. And whenever Rodney or I left the room, we had to have a mask on.

That night at the hospital was bad. Mason couldn’t really sleep and when he would fall asleep, one of us would cough (remember we have whopping cough) and it would scare Mason and wake him up. He would just be in hysterics. Rodney and I did not sleep at all that night, but Mason finally ended up getting a little sleep. The next day Mason was in pretty good spirits and didn’t really seem to question the cast. He remembered that he had hurt his leg and remembered falling off his bike. We finally got to leave the hospital around 3 that day. Mason fell asleep on the car ride home and we just transferred straight into bed when we got home, he slept from 4 that day till 7 the next morning.

The next week was crazy. One of us had to sleep with Mason and one of us had to sleep with Travis. We both set alarms so we could make sure Mason had his pain medication throughout the night. And then we still had Travis waking up several times a night, there was not much sleep going on. Mason would also wake up, I think he was having spasms which the doctor warned us about. They were pretty horrible, and he was just hysterical. It would take us quite a while to calm him down. It really just broke our hearts every time it happened.

But things are getting a little easier now, and we found out yesterday that we should only have one more week in the cast. YIPPEE! I am so ready for life to get back to normal, and for my little guy to be his old happy self again. He has accepted the cast for now, and has learned to get around by rolling and crawling. And the last couple of days he has even been walking a little by holding onto furniture and cruising around. So my little guy has been more than a trooper, he has done awesome. And so has Travis, thank goodness he is such a happy baby. So anyway, I know this is a long post, but I wanted to document all this so Mason can read it one day and realize what a trooper he really was at the age of 2.5.