broken wrist

Noah is seven, and as such decided that he was ready to take off his training wheels. He was right. He learned very quickly only about three weeks ago and has been wanting to ride every day. Last weekend we even went on a five mile bike ride as a family and Noah did fantastic. He's even improved mounting his bike and turning and going up hills.

However, Noah had a bad bike accident as of Tuesday May 22. He broke his arm. The radial bone in his forearm, to be precise. You see how his arm is kinda bowed or bent down just below the wrist?

That's because it is. Or was. The radius broke downwards. It was a complete break. In this xray, you can see how the top bone is displaced downwards. It's supposed to be even with the bone underneath it - the ulna.

The Story is as follows.

Noah was making some laps around the street in front of our house accompanied by daddy due to the busy street. He was coming down the street and making his left turn to cross the street and come home because we had plans out for the evening (I even had a side dish prepared). However, he either lost speed or lost his balance or both. He turned his bike too sharply and just fell over on his left side. He didn't scream bloody murder out of anger and frustration like he usually would have. Terry says it a much different reaction. Noah got out from under his bike, left it there, cradled his left wrist while crying and insisted on going to the doctor. Terry saw that his arm looked like Harry Potter's when Lockhart removed his bones and brought him in saying he thought we needed to go to the doctor. He neglected to mention the bent angle of Noah's arm so I didn't believe either of them because Noah tends to freak out (bloody murder scream mentioned above). Until I saw it and then we immediately went to Urgent Care.

After the xray, they said the bone would have to be re-set before it was casted and that was best done under general anesthesia due to the pain that would cause. So they splinted it and set us up for the following morning at a Surgery Center. Noah did very well and it only took minutes to re-align the bone once he was knocked out. You can see the break on the left long bone but now it's in alignment.

You can tell even better from the side that it's back where it's supposed to be because you can no longer see the bone underneath it.

Noah was pretty disappointed to hear that he couldn't get his red cast yet due to the swelling. So he's in a splint for the next two weeks. He's doing really well with it too. He's not complained of pain at all. Guess we'll have to add wrist guards and knee pads to his bike riding gear!