Freaky fractured femur

This is a hard post to write, so I'm cutting right to the chase.  Riley has a fractured left femur.  We don't know how it happened.  (That's the hardest part...)  She's been favoring her leg this week.  It reached the "very uncomfortable" point on Thursday.  Her daycare provider has reported fussiness at different times of the day all week.  On Thursday, she noticed that Riley was not putting weight on her left leg.  Both Dan and I had noticed a little sensitivity when we changed her diaper earlier in the week, but never expected something as severe as a fracture.  Riley simply wasn't crying enough... and when she did, we attributed it to a new tooth popping through or the return of acid reflux as a result of eating cereal.  After she screamed when I set her down to play on Thursday night, I knew something was wrong.

I called the on-call nurse at Riley's doctor's office.  Unfortunately, it was 7:15 pm and their x-ray machine was broken.  I gave Riley some motrin per the nurse's suggestion and promised to take her to the ER if she was in a lot of pain during the night.  With Dan in Utah skiing, I was hoping that sitting in the ER with 2 kids at 2 am wouldn't be necessary.  Being the good girl she is, Riley slept through the night.  

Riley got in for an appointment with her doctor mid-morning.  I kept my scheduled dentist appointment for earlier this morning and Riley did well at daycare.  Once at the doctor's office, we were in the x-ray room (thank God they were able to fix it before Riley's appointment!!) within about 4 minutes.  We have a great doctor... he doesn't mess around.  When the x-rays came back as abnormal, he was immediately on the phone calling the best "bone specialist" in Minnesota.  30 minutes later, we were leaving the office with x-rays in hand.  We went home for a nap before heading for Gillette Children's Hospital in St. Paul.

If you ever need to take your child for specialty care, I can't say enough good things about Gillette.  The people there are incredible and the place runs like a fine-tuned sports car.  The doctor at Gillette confirmed the fracture and explained 3 treatment options (the first of which included checking Riley into the hospital overnight, putting her under and casting a big chunk of her body... luckily we didn't need to explore that choice!).  Instead, the doctor fitted her with a Wheaton harness, commonly used for infants with dislocated hips.  After x-rays to make sure the harness would hold her leg in place, I took my new little froggy back home.  The security of the harness made her instantly feel better.  She started smiling again... something she hadn't done since Thursday morning.  

The question that eats at me is "How could this have happened?"  I don't think we'll ever know.  And, quite honestly, I'm trying not to think about it right now.  The most important thing is that Riley will heal.  And if we look at her history with broken bones, she'll do it like a champ.  :)