Oh Geez...where do I begin?

Alright...I know it's been longer then I promised since my last update, no shocker there. This week has been...well a bit crazy. It started out pretty normal, Lorelai and I took a long walk on Monday around the neighborhood. I'm trying to get the lay of the land and find out where a few of the women I go to church with live, and also get some exercise...sitting around the house just ain't doing it for me! I was great at going for walks in SC....but it wasn't cold there and there weren't any hills the size of Mt. Everest that I had to climb. Okay...I exaggerate, but I live in a little valley at the bottom of like 3 hills so...lol if I want to go anywhere, no matter which direction, I have to climb a big hill to get out. Its daunting. But I do it occasionally. :) Erick came home Monday night and said that he was going to be working overnight Tuesday and Wednesday and then have Thursday night off in prep for going back to days on Friday. Well, Tuesday night passed, and he comes home Wednesday morning with the news that they finished what needed to be done on Tuesday so he goes back to work on Thursday morning. He went to bed, I went about my normal duties. About 8 or 8:30, Lorelai had a poopy diaper, and I don't usually let her sit in those, so we went up stairs to change and then, on the way down the stairs one of my worst nightmares came true, I slipped somehow on the third step from the bottom, and with Lorelai in my arms we both tumbled down the remaining stairs and landed on the cold hard floor at the bottom.

Well...of course we both were a bit shocked, Lorelai started screaming after a beat, I just held her and rocked her and tried not to panic, as I knew I had landed on her leg, right on the corner of the stair. I gently examined her leg, but there wasn't any obvious breakage, but she wasn't moving it either, so I picked us up, held her and rocked her until she stopped crying, and then took a moment to decide what to do. Erick was upstairs sleeping, I was actually kind of surprised that he hadn't come down to check on us with all of the racket, but I needed to let him know what happened and see if he felt we should go to the hospital. So I braved the stairs again, and took Lorelai upstairs, woke Erick up, told him what had happened, and when he reached out and barely touched her leg, she screamed like a banshee again and that kind of sealed the deal for us. So we packed ourselves up and headed to the emergency room.When I put her in her car seat, I did notice that the leg I landed on was quite a bit warmer then her other leg, but as soon as we put her in she started kicking both legs like normal, so I really wasn't sure.

We get to the hospital, we're all checked in, and the nurse comes and looks at her. At this point she's happy and playing, moving both legs apparently fine, there's no bruising and not much swelling, though its a bit hard to tell with how chunky she is, so the nurse tells us she's not going to order and x-ray, that we're just gonna wait for the Dr. Well, just after the nurse leaves the room Lorelai kicks both her legs enthusiastically and hit my thigh, and screams at the top of her lungs again...so I'm thinking, man I'm going to request an x-ray even if the Dr. doesn't think she needs one. The Dr. comes in and starts examining her, and she starts to cry, so he asks if she stands or does any kind of jumping, and we're like...yes, ye she does. (The Jumperoo is her favorite place to be for goodness sake!) So he tells us to stand her up and see if she'll jump, so we do but she only stands on her left leg, and holds her right leg far up from the table. So he orders and x-ray.

2 hours later and we find out she does indeed have a fracture in her right tibia, just above her ankle. They put her leg in a splint, and let us know that we need to call her Dr. so we can get an appointment with an Orthopedic Surgeon so that they can put her in a cast. The ER Dr. estimated she'd be in a cast for about a month.

::Sigh:: We had an appointment with our Dr. yesterday at the Navy hospital, and there is no one close that does Orthopedic for 6 month-olds, its pretty rare for a baby to break a bone seeing as their bones are like rubber, so we have an appointment at Yale Hospital in New Haven on Monday at 2. I promise I'll update more with that after her appointment.

I'm okay, I didn't hurt myself any worse then a little bit of a backache yesterday. Emotionally though I'm kinda...eh. I know its not my fault, it was an accident and accidents do happen, but every time I look at her little splinted leg I relive the fall in my head, and the Dr. yesterday was all like...how in the world did you break her leg, do you know how hard it is to break a baby's bones? you must have landed pretty hard... and I'm thinking...well, you have a 250 lb weight land on your leg on the corner of a stair and see how you fare! I mean its probably a blessing that she is as young as she is or the damage would probably be alot worse! But the nurses at the Navy hospital were all really nice, one nurse told me about how her daughter and granddaughter had the same kind of fall a few years back and her granddaughter had to be put in a cast, and the kid hardly even knew she had it on, and another nurse told me how her 5-year-old had just fallen down the stairs a few days ago and was all bruised up...you know trying to let me know that that kind of accident happens to everyone. It made me feel a little bit better but still...my baby's in a splint and soon a cast, and its all my fault. I mean she should be learning how to crawl and exploring her world, but instead she can't even roll over both ways anymore! Can't change that fact now, can ya?

Anway...I have some pictures of her x-rays. I'll explain them underneith each photo. On the lighter side, I did finally get my own car yesterday. Its a 2008 Toyota Matrix, which is a wagon. Its a good car, only has 7 k on it, fits Lorelai's carseat alot better then the Focus. Its not as big as we origionally wanted to go, but it was a practically brand new car that was in our price range so...we got it. Erick, of course, is worrying over how the extra car-payment is going to affect our finances...he's such a worry wort. We have more then enough money to fit another car payment into our budget, but then again I'm the one who actually does our budget so, I'm not stressed. And it gives me the freedom I've been craving here. Lorelai and I are going to go to the mall today and walk around. Since she's pretty immobile she's antsy. She cann't do her jumperoo and she gets bored playing with her toys, and I cann't carry her around all of the time because I'm not supposed to let the leg dangle too much so...lol we need a little it more stimulation then my house can give at this moment!

Anyway...I've written a book so I'm gonna go now! Love to you all!

jen

Side View

The fracture is just across from the big R...you can see the little shift in the white part of the outside of her bone

Front View

The fracture is just above the R...you can see the little dark spot that looks like a hair on the picture...hence "hair-line fracture" :)

Pretty New car :)