Wrist Trouble

Sorry I might not have replied to some emails and maybe even calls - I am a bit snowed under lately with so much to do....started chemo Monday and was making hay while the sun shined with every minute booked for the last 2 weeks.

Took Ethan to a hand specialist today for a nagging sore wrist. He fell on it in late August and about every 3 weeks or so he would mention that it bothered him. In all the hubbub around here I finally realized it wasn't getting better and went to the pediatrician who said it was probably a sprain, then hand doc was out of town for a few weeks, and now we finally went to our appt and ...

IT IS BROKEN!!!! ARGGHHHHHH!!!!!!

And since we didn't catch it early when a cast might have worked he is likely now going to need a bone graft / screw / and pins. ARGH ARGH ARGH. In my defense the doc said they see this a LOT with this type of fracture as they are barely noticable sometimes, and then they do not heal right, etc. I looked up lots of articles on line (scaphoid nonunion fracture) and the surgery suggested, etc, is right down the line exactly what the doc said. We might get a second opinion but this doc is highly recommended and all that he said makes perfect sense. He was not pushy, offered that we get a second opinion from a pediatric hand specialist and such. But the xray shows clearly even to my inexperienced eye that the break is not healing and the edges are calcifying without knitting together. The danger in "letting it go" is that the detached bone could die off from lack of blood flow or the fracture could displace and so on.

Ethan has a CAT scan of the wrist tomorrow to evaluate the damage to the blood flow to the broken piece, etc. Not sure if we can get the surgery in before Christmas but I sure would like him healed up as soon as possible - and recovery sounds like 2-3 months at least. :-( He will have a screw and probably two pins. A splint and then a cast post-op and a short surgery to remove the pins after the cast is off. He was to join a homeschool volleyball team in January and that is shot for this year, and he will have to stop archery too. :-(

Thanks all, for listening to my tale of woe...... I feel SO BAD about my son needing surgery for something possibly because I didn't act on it for him sooner. There is a chance that even with casting it might not have healed, but I still feel bad.

I am dreading Christmas on chemo and pushing myself hard to get ahead of it all so if you could pray for me on that too I would really appreciate it. Charles' back is slowly improving and boy do we need him better asap so please pray for him too. He is in PT three times a week.

Thank you!
Karen

ps - Bet every family doesn't have their own personal hand / arm surgery specialist like we do... this is our FOURTH kid - if you count Charles as a kid..... to use this doctor in the last 5 years or so... ?????? What is THAT about ????