Well here I am sitting at my iMac with my coat on. Why? You may ask. Well following our recent spell of mild weather things have definitely turned a little chillier around here and my boiler has decided that now would be a good time to misbehave. Just when they are predicting that we might have snow!
Still on the bright side, a friend of mine spent yesterday evening in A & E with her daughter who fell and hurt her wrist whilst ice skating at the weekend. Fortunately no broken bones. She wasn't too worried initially but remembered the incident we had with Livvy last year so thought she had better get it checked out just in case.
Poor Olivia ended up walking around with a buckle fracture to her wrist for two weeks last year following a fall from her cousin's scooter whilst visiting her grandparents. She had mentioned to me what happened when she came home and that it was a little uncomfortable but hadn't seemed too worried and there was literally a very slight swelling, no bruising etc at all. I strapped it up with a bandage for her and that seemed to do the trick - to be honest I thought at one point she was just enjoying the attention of having her wrist strapped up!
Oh how wrong I was...... cue the photo:
She was due to go to a couple of wall climbing birthday parties a fortnight later and she mentioned that her wrist was still a little puffy so I decided to take her to the doctor just to be sure. He originally thought that she had perhaps sustained a scaphoid fracture and duly sent us off to Chelsea & Westminster Hospital for an x-ray. Turns out she had a buckle fracture to her wrist, one of the most common fractures sustained by children and one of the more difficult ones to spot without an x-ray. It often occurs during a fall, when a child will automatically put their hand out to stop themselves.
Needless to say I felt pretty bad that we hadn't picked up on it - particularly when the Sister in the Fracture Clinic, who was actually lovely, asked Olivia how and when it had happened and when she heard that it had happened nearly two weeks ago, gave me a "look", you know the kind I mean, that "how can you have missed that - what kind of parent are you" and asked if I had seen the x-ray! I think I can safely say that she doesn't have children of her own.
Fortunately the consultant, who was also rather nice, did say that it was fairly common for it to be missed, particularly when a child hasn't been complaining of any real pain etc. My biggest concern was whether my DIY strapping had caused any long term damage but he did say that had he seen it sooner he would have had to "manipulate" her wrist back into the correct position under anaesthetic but that my strapping mean't that was no longer necessary - phew!
So the moral of the story is: if your child falls in this way, get them checked out at the doctor just to be sure - even if they aren't complaining and there are no obvious signs as left unchecked this can cause problems later. Fortunately for Martha yesterday, she just sustained some bruising.
Right I think it is time I went to make a rather large batch of soup - something tells me we are going to need it later :)