Broken?

Thanks to Brynn's insistence, we have Ellie and her "broken" leg documented.

On Sunday morning (July 4th) Ellie and Jared were jumping off the stairs and onto cushions they placed at the bottom.  Apparently Ellie jumped but missed the cushions and landed on the tile.  She was very upset and would not walk, but I largely suspected she was over-reacting due to the fact that we arrived home late the night before from our two week stay in Utah.  I picked her up and buckled her in the car to leave for church, and didn't really think twice about it until she tried to walk on it during Sacrament Meeting and fell to the ground. 

Still figuring it was more from being tired and wanting attention then anything, I took her to Nursery and mentioned that she was not using her leg and to get me if it continued.  I felt bad when two hours later when church was over I picked her up from Nursery and the Nursery worker had held her the whole time.  She said the one time she put her down Ellie crawled to where she needed to go.

I began to suspect she might not be over-reacting.  I took her to our Dr's office which is open on weekends and they sent her for x-rays.  They told us she fractured the growth plate at the end of her leg bone and put a full leg splint on her until we could see an orthopeadic surgeon. 

Ellie figured out how to scoot around with her big splint, but I still had to help her a lot.  She complained about the splint, and I was imagining how awful it would be when she got a real cast on.  I pushed her in the stroller everywhere I could with Nate in my arms.  I was quite a comical site. 

When we finally saw the orthopeadic surgeon he took more x-rays and didn't think the leg looked fractured after all.  He wanted to keep it splinted for 10 days, and if she hadn't used her leg by then he wanted to see her again to cast her.  Gratefully, after about 8 days of wearing the splint Ellie started bearing weight on her leg.  We never had to get a cast, and I was grateful to have Ellie be independent again!