The Blessing Of A Few Broken Bones At Christmas...

Let me just start with this.... One of my least favorite things to diagnose in my patients is broken toes.  They are painful and there's really not a whole lot you can do other than some pain medication and try to convince active dogs and cats to "take it easy".  Good luck with that.

In my early days, especially coming from a school that is known world-wide for it's orthopedic expertise (most of the orthopedic surgeries in veterinary medicine originated with my old professors in some form) I would try to treat.  This involved carefully placed splints and bandages.  After about a year of doing it this way, (seeing more than I can count as an emergency clinician), I just kind of threw up my hands in the air.  Often times the splint took a painful dog to completely non-weightbearing and agitated.  How can you explain that putting something uncomfortable and that interferes with walking is going to help?

Sometimes, due to improper care of the bandage the broken toe became limb swelling or infection or something worse.  I don't really think the splints ever made a huge difference.  In animals that are calm or a particularly bad case, or multiple broken toes, I'll still place a bandage- more to make me feel like I'm doing something than really thinking it will help.  I've had broken toes before (I'm an inherent klutz) and I know you just kind of power through it.

Tuesday, I'm not sure exactly how it happened but a piece of our cabinetry that we had meant to fix fell from about a height of three feet and hit me squarely on my middle toe and middle metatarsal (foot bone).  I'm not a curser by nature, but I kind of wanted to holler something.  My four year old was standing nearby.  I transferred my expressions of pain to stomping on my heel until I could regain my composure.  My four-year old so "helpfully" came over and said, "Mommy, there's no blood- it's all good, you can stop carrying on," or something along those lines.  My son is normally empathetic, apparently not in this case.  By the level of swelling, bruising and pain, I didn't really need an X-ray to figure out that it's broken.  I iced it and called a friend in the medical profession and asked, "Is it like it is in my patients, kind of stinks to be you but there's nothing we can do situation?" She verified what I already knew and said, "you don't need to go to urgent care before Christmas, you can get it checked out after and there's not really much you can do..."

So I've been hobbling around with a broken toe and metatarsal.  I initially tried to power through and then I reassessed.  Rest is best and do I really need to do a ton of stuff at Christmas time?  So a couple of my friends are going to get gifts after Christmas....so I asked a friend to pick up some stuff for me from Costco instead of hobbling around myself... so some cookies didn't get baked....  Christmas does go on.  As my four year old reminds me- what's important at Christmas is that it's Jesus' birthday.  Let's just simplify it.  I don't think he notices half the stuff I do for Christmas anyway.

So my broken bones have meant that I'm not racing around as much and I'm enjoying more cuddle time.  It has forced me to slow down and realize I don't HAVE to do everything.  That is a blessing.  Merry Christmas!