Oh No!

YES.  'Tis True.  Just 5 days after her surgery, she was just starting to feel like she could move again.  She has been pretty faithfully "working out"....which she does to try to get her strength back . She still suffers from horrible ankle pain.  Anyway, she was bouncing on top of one of those large exercise balls.  Her brother was right next to her bouncing way too high on his exercise ball.  Next thing we knew, he had kicked her ball out from under her and she was flying backwards only to catch herself with her arms.  She immediately started screaming and crying.  Jerad and I were both right there and saw it happen.  And I immediately felt a pit in my stomach.  We always worry about her breaking a bone doing something.  28 months of steroids has made her bones very weak and brittle.  We knew that.  We iced her arm immediately and wrapped it in an ace bandage all night.  We didn't take her in....figuring orthopedic would be closed (it was evening) and we would have to wait anyway.  She could move it also, which made us feel better. 

 

Fast forward to the next morning.  She had been up several times during the night in pain and it wasn't get any better.  I called her old pediatrician figuring this was a "non cancer" related issue.  And they couldn't get her in with him that day.  UGH.  Seriously. (Who does this when you say your child broke her arm?)  So I called down to Dr B and he just ordered up an x-ray taking my word for it.  Less than an hour later we knew she had fractured her arm.  About 3-4 inches above her hand, and luckily the break was also above the growth plate which can be tricky.  She knew right away that she was choosing an orange cast for Ally's Army!  The cast will be on 3-4 weeks.  The radiologist did let us know that her bones are especially weak and thin and he wanted her to keep drinking her milk and also continue exercising.  The only thing that can help her bones build back up. We did have to pull her out of the basketball league that was due to start Saturday.  She was disappointed, but we kinda took this as a sign that she wasn't ready anyway.  And it's pretty hard to play piano with a hand in the cast too.  But she is gonna keep doing modified Taekwondo. 

 

To us a broken arm is no big deal . We can handle it.  After everything we have been through, this is small potatoes.  There is one annoying part...We don't mention this part....but Ally pretty much never sleeps all night.  Maybe once a week she sleeps through the night.  It is like having a baby.  She has insomnia a lot (also from the steroids...HATE those) and she repeatedly gets up and then wakes her Dad up to "help her get back to sleep."  We had almost reached the end of our rope with this...because we can't really help her sleep anyway.  It is so frustrating that there are so many things we just can't fix.  Just one more aspect of childhood cancer that I hate. So now to add salt to our wounds....last night I think she was up six times.  Itchy cast!!!  And of course she woke her Dad  to try to stick stuff down the cast and scratch her arm.  Holy cow.  

 

So here's hoping to more sleep!  And a healed arm.