Those hardwood floors are precisely the reason Andrew wants to keep his wheelchair! He can get up some good speed and he's learned to steer around with utmost precision--he imagines he's Racer X (from Speed Racer, remember? Andrew never wants to be Speed; he prefers Racer X, Speed's older brother :)
Speaking of those hardwood floors, here's my broken foot story; I don't mind telling at all. In January of 2006, when Madeline was about three months old and I was still doing night feeds, it was very early in the morning, about six o'clock, and barely light. She had awakened hungry, and I was carrying her out of the bedroom in the semi-light when I stepped on a Matchbox car (if your son had those, then you know no little boy ever has three or four of them but forty or fifty or a thousand). I had somehow missed picking this one up, and so stepping on it was like stepping on a slick spot on that floor. As I did so, I lost my balance badly but of course my only goal was Let's not drop this newborn baby on a hardwood floor!, and let it suffice to say, Madeline did not get dropped but my left ankle and foot took a beating. At first, I thought I had only badly twisted my ankle, and eventually that felt better. My foot, though, kept hurting and hurting but I did nothing about it until one of my co-workers remarked, four months later--yes, four months; I really do ignore pain--"You know, Rita, if your foot still hurts you probably have something wrong in there." So I went to the doctor, finally, and it turned out I had a broken bone in my fifth metatarsal, meaning the long bone of the little toe, the part that runs across the top of the foot to the ankle. When my doctor asked when the injury occurred and I told him the past January, he looked at me like I was crazy. I wore a walking cast, a boot similar to your daughter's, for twelve weeks. But that wasn't the end of this.
In February of 2007, last year, I took a misstep and I heard that bone break again--it sounded like a twig snapping. When I went back to the doctor, he x-rayed it again and found that it was indeed no new break; it was the old break, rebroken. "I'm not touching this," he said, and sent me to an orthopedic doctor, who pronounced it a "true Jones fracture" meaning the break had occurred in a very particular part of the bone that has a low blood supply and are notorious for healing poorly. His first approach, though, was conservative; he wanted to pin it as a last resort. So I went into a cast and was given instructions not to bear any weight on it, so this meant either crutches or a wheelchair. Not wanting to seem weak (I'm rather foolish that way), I opted for crutches. For ten weeks. And I didn't miss a day of work although I had to teach sitting down. But that approach worked, and I have had no trouble since.
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Date: 2008-03-27 12:57 pm (UTC)Speaking of those hardwood floors, here's my broken foot story; I don't mind telling at all. In January of 2006, when Madeline was about three months old and I was still doing night feeds, it was very early in the morning, about six o'clock, and barely light. She had awakened hungry, and I was carrying her out of the bedroom in the semi-light when I stepped on a Matchbox car (if your son had those, then you know no little boy ever has three or four of them but forty or fifty or a thousand). I had somehow missed picking this one up, and so stepping on it was like stepping on a slick spot on that floor. As I did so, I lost my balance badly but of course my only goal was Let's not drop this newborn baby on a hardwood floor!, and let it suffice to say, Madeline did not get dropped but my left ankle and foot took a beating. At first, I thought I had only badly twisted my ankle, and eventually that felt better. My foot, though, kept hurting and hurting but I did nothing about it until one of my co-workers remarked, four months later--yes, four months; I really do ignore pain--"You know, Rita, if your foot still hurts you probably have something wrong in there." So I went to the doctor, finally, and it turned out I had a broken bone in my fifth metatarsal, meaning the long bone of the little toe, the part that runs across the top of the foot to the ankle. When my doctor asked when the injury occurred and I told him the past January, he looked at me like I was crazy. I wore a walking cast, a boot similar to your daughter's, for twelve weeks. But that wasn't the end of this.
In February of 2007, last year, I took a misstep and I heard that bone break again--it sounded like a twig snapping. When I went back to the doctor, he x-rayed it again and found that it was indeed no new break; it was the old break, rebroken. "I'm not touching this," he said, and sent me to an orthopedic doctor, who pronounced it a "true Jones fracture" meaning the break had occurred in a very particular part of the bone that has a low blood supply and are notorious for healing poorly. His first approach, though, was conservative; he wanted to pin it as a last resort. So I went into a cast and was given instructions not to bear any weight on it, so this meant either crutches or a wheelchair. Not wanting to seem weak (I'm rather foolish that way), I opted for crutches. For ten weeks. And I didn't miss a day of work although I had to teach sitting down. But that approach worked, and I have had no trouble since.