Jack's Great Fall

Let me paint a picture for you:

Every night after baths, Asher and Jack spend a few (ok, exactly 5 because they are little and need very specific limits) minutes bouncing around on our bed. When the timer goes off it's time to brush teeth and head to bed. Jack loves his tooth brush. He also says about 5 words, one of which is teeth.

So, every night the timer goes off and Jack throws himself off the bed and takes off running as fast as his miniature legs will go, running towards the bathroom screaming, "TEETH!!!" We all giggle at him and he giggles at himself and then we hold him down and force him to let us brush his teeth.

This sets the stage for our latest adventure.

Three weeks ago we were plowing through our normal bath and bed routine. Jack heard the timer and took off only to hit a puddle of water when he went into the bathroom. Down he went and we all braced for the scream. Oddly enough there wasn't much of a scream, just a heap of Jack sort of crying and looking confused. I scooped him up, dried him off, looked him over for big bumps and put him to bed.

He whimpered for a few minutes and then drifted off to sleep. A few hours later he started crying and since that is pretty unusual I ran up to see what was wrong. He looked fine, but he wouldn't go back to sleep. I figured his belly hurt (I think we had something really healthy like chocolate chip pancakes for dinner) and the thought even crossed my mind that maybe he hurt himself and needed some Tylenol. Then the thought of him throwing up bright red Tylenol all over his crib crossed my mind. I rocked him, Roger rocked him and finally he just went back to sleep.

The next morning I found him sort of floundering in his crib. His arms were hanging onto the edge, but his feet appeared to not be working. I got him breakfast and when he was done I plopped him down on the floor and realized that the boy couldn't stand up.

Jack, the one-legged wonder

Off to the doctor we went, got some x-rays, watched the doctor search Google for "toddler hip pain" and left without knowing anything more than he didn't appear to have broken anything. We went back three days later (three non-walking Jack days later) to see a pediatric orthopedic doctor. More x-rays, thankfully no more Google and no more answers. Just a two year old that couldn't walk.

Hanging out with Daddy during one of many trips to the hospital.

We waited a week (another non-walking week) and went back again. I tried almost every day to get Jack to at least stand up, but he would always just perch on his one good leg and then fall down and crawl away. Of course, at the doctor's office he stood up, and while holding onto my hand, walked down the hall. Fantastic. The doctor told us all would be well and sent us home. Jack refused to stand or walk for two more days before finally waking up one morning and deciding he was ready to go.

We watched him limp around for another week before we decided that maybe we should go back to the doctor even though the doctor told us he was fine.

We found some fun ways to have fun without using our legs

The doctors we had already seen were out of the country, so we ended up at another international hospital seeing another new doctor (I think this was number 4). This guy was on top of things. Instead of telling Jack to walk, he threw some toys across the room and let Asher and Jack run after them. Once he saw how he was limping (and confirmed that I was not imagining it) he told us his plan for figuring out what was wrong. Once again we needed x-rays and I have to say I'm getting pretty good at holding Jack's leg in the correct positions.

We headed back to the doctor's office and then we finally had our answer: Jack had a toddler fracture and now that almost three weeks had passed we could see his bone starting to heal. Since Jack was already walking the doctor decided no cast for now and we all headed home happy to finally have some answers. Other than a few more follow up appointments it looks like we finally figured out the ending to Jack's Great Fall.

Back to normal: running wild in the streets of Bangkok with his big brother