Delayed start for my sons boating season

[RWilson2526]

Got a call Friday afternoon from my sons after care at his school. "Mr Wilson, Jake just fell off the monkey bars and I think he broke his leg" The kid that made the call sounded scared out of his wits. All of this of course is happening on his birtday no less (7 years old)

The details are sketchy but the long and short of is that he fell from the top of playground equipment and in a straight down movement landed on his right leg. His femur fractured completely in two and resulted with what they call "severe angulation and displacement" The two pieces were about 90 degrees to each other with one end about 2" up from where it was supposed to be....

Got to the school in time to see 2 ambulances, police, fire , the whole damn towns emercency services it seemed. Took the ride in the ambulance. I knew it wasnt good when they immediately gave him and IV and morphine for the pain...that and the grotesque bulging of his thigh....did not break through the skin fortunately.

The fix apparently for 6 to about 11 year olds is fortunately the best of all procedures....5 years old or less they put you in a full body cast for about 2 months....older than 12 they go with solid rods and screws and such as most of the growing is done already....for his age they use what they call stabilizing flexible nails where after aligning the bones again, they drill into the rounded part at the bottom of the femur above the knee and drive in long flexible titanium nails, one on each side, and push them up all the way to the top of the femur....they are kind of bowed and the outward pressure of the bowed metal keeps everything in place....2 tiny incisions above the knee and and ace bandage, no cast at all and was home by 4:00 pm on Saturday....as the surgeon called it "really a marvel of modern medicine" Will be in a wheel chair apparently for 6 weeks or so as he wont be able to put any weight on it. If this had happened just a few years ago he would have been hospitalized for about 3 weeks in traction and a full body cast for 8 weeks, would have to repeat the 1st grade due to not being able to finish and lord knows what else.

Thought about Spareparts and his daughter a few times while at the hospital thinking man this aint nothing compared to what some families go through but it really put a perspective on some things.

here's a link showing the procedure...pretty cool stuffhttp://www.jbjs.org.uk/cgi/reprint/86-B/7/954.pdf