Taisei Buffet

Nursemaid's Elbow

Maybe this is all very obvious to the more experienced (or more cautious) parent, but it can be very bad to pick up your toddler by his hands - especially by one of his hands, in my case. Taisei is such a skinny-bone that I never thought his weight would cause much injury, but I was wrong.

Saturday night at the annual SLC Obon Festival, we were clowning around on the grass. I was talking to someone and Taisei was climbing all around my legs. I can't remember why, but I picked up Taisei by one wrist, and then by the hand. He twisted in a slightly weird angle and so I let go. It all took place within 3 seconds or so. A few seconds after I let go, Taisei started to whimper in pain and I could tell something was wrong. I let him go about playing with his buddies for a while, but I could tell he was still in a great deal of pain when he moved his left arm. He would laugh and shout, and then the next second, cry out in pain. His friends didn't know what to make of it, so they would just come and go. But Taisei never fully started crying, so our doctor-friend who was with us didn't think that there was anything really wrong. It didn't help that I had him look at the wrist and not the elbow. For the rest of the evening, Taisei dangled his left arm limply at his side. That's the part that really worried me. He wouldn't lift it and he wouldn't let us move it. On the way home, when I gave him the GPS to play with in the car, he rested it in his lap and only used his right arm to play with it. I was getting more and more worried, but I thought I would let him try to sleep it off. Plus, the IHC Instacare was already closed and I knew that the service you get there around closing time is basically crap - particularly the assistants at the front desk. Yes, I'm a regular there.

The next morning, no change. He kept it limp, next to his left hip. He would cry when he knew we were about to touch it, such as when we went to put on his church clothes, or went to put him in his car seat. He was obviously in a lot of pain when the arm moved in a certain way. The hard part was that he's still a little too young to tell us where the pain was. Maybe he didn't really know. We decided to take him to IHC Instacare as soon as we finished our church meeting, where I was the organist for that Sunday.

At the Instacare, the doctor instantly knew what it was - something nicknamed "Nursemaid's Elbow." Apparently, adults have some kind of bridge that keep the radius (one of the bones in the forearm) from popping out, whereas toddlers to not. Dangling kids by their arms can cause this bone to pop out. That's exactly what happened to Taisei. They said it was very common (and I was afraid they were going to think there was child-abuse going on, but they didn't. Phew! :) Our doctor was a resident (and I think he didn't want to be the one who fixed it) so he got the more experienced doctor to fix it. She gently lifted Taisei's arm straight in front of him, warned him that it would hurt, turned Taisei's palms upwards, and then bent his forearm at the elbow all the way until it touched the bicep of his upper arm.

At that moment, Taisei looked like he was in so much pain - his mouth was wide open, but no sound coming out of it. Only tears streamed out of his tightly shut eyes. I felt so bad for the pain that I felt like I had inflicted on my baby!

Taisei never actually made much noise. Here's the amazing part. The doctor held a lollipop in front of Taisei for him to reach out and grab. He kept trying to get it with his right hand, but the doctor would only let him to get it with his left. Just as the doctor predicted, after about five minutes he grew confident enough to reach up and grab it with his left. He needed a few minutes to be convinced that his left arm was no longer in pain. Five minutes later, he was back to his normal self, running wild all over the Instacare, using BOTH arms to push tables and chairs all over the lobby. I was so relieved and grateful to the two good doctors, Dr. Baar and Dr. Westermann, at the Sugarhouse IHC Instacare.



Yesterday, when we went out for a walk and Taisei wanted to swing by his arms, Wami and I said NO WAY. :)

posted by Jerin at 1:31 PM