BeBa

The call every mother dreads…

Bailey took a tumble from her horse today and broke her left shoulder (proximal humerus fracture).

Mercifully, she’s right handed.

Bailey in her element - where she intends to be again as soon as possible!

It’s a pretty major fracture – bones are broken and all out of kilter. The doctor said without surgery, she might regain 50% range of motion at best, so… surgery tomorrow. This is an internal fixation procedure she’ll be having at 1:30 pm tomorrow. For those unfamiliar with that (like I was, until today), the doctor will realign her shoulder bones with an x-ray machine set up as his guide. Once the bones are in place, he will anchor them with long pins that stick out of her body (eek). Once the bones are starting to knit back together, the pins are removed.

It’s a short procedure (the doctor anticipates it will take 15-20 minutes), but she’ll be under general anesthesia.

Bailey is being a real trooper. She has a lot of valid anxiety about surgery (“What if something goes wrong with the surgery? With the anesthesia?”) and also just in general (“What if my shoulder is never normal again??”). It’s surreal – no one ever thinks when they wake up in the morning that this will be the day they hurt themselves in such a way that they’ll never be the same again. She’s grappling with that a bit. But, generally, she’s being very brave about it. She’s also very sad that she can’t ride for a couple months.

She’s also taking responsibility for the accident. And it WAS an accident and it could happen anytime. There’s a reason, after all, they make you sign a waiver before you even breathe the same air as horses. But there were a couple choices she was telling me about that probably led to this. I’m so proud of her for understanding that. Her maturity and emotional intelligence amazes me sometimes.

She made a set of decisions that were less cautious about her own safety than they could have been. First, her horse is not liking the bit they’ve taken to using with him lately, which makes him harder to control. Then, she noticed he had a sore spot on his girth, so she chose to ride bareback. Even that would have been fine, but she didn’t want the bareback pad to rub that sore spot either, so she went bareback *without* the pad. When she lost her balance during a trot/canter, she slipped right off his slippery back. She told me she might have been able to regain her balance if she’d had the pad there for some traction.

But, ah well. I think she’s definitely learned something about her own mortality here and not taking it so much for granted. She told me today that she has always had this feeling that SHE will be one of the lucky ones who never gets injured from a fall. Today she learned she’s only human, and therefore breakable. And how fast and easily it can happen! The horse didn’t throw her, she just slid slowly and gracefully down, breaking her fall with her shoulder. Such a slow fall, I thought she must have simply dislocated it. But now she understands that if you hit at the right angle, you can be vulnerable to a break.

Juggling needs

This has been an exhausting day. Aside from the obvious, there was this juggling of different children’s needs. When I first called the surgeon for an appointment, they said they couldn’t get Bailey in until Monday. HM and I are supposed to be in FL on Monday! I explained and they managed to squeeze her in with a different surgeon today. Then he wanted to schedule her surgery for Monday! He’s leaving town on Thursday (I get back on Wednesday) and he said the surgery should be done within 10 days. And honestly the sooner the better since a growth plate is affected and she’s still got 2 years of growing.

I was a the point of just canceling the trip (poor HM!!), but he said, if we can get an OR tomorrow, I’ll do it tomorrow. That took awhile and we were on tenterhooks. Poor Bailey was in tears feeling SO guilty that the trip might be canceled. But it seems to have all worked out. Scott’s mom was already scheduled to come down on Saturday so she could watch Bailey/Mira/Jake while I was out of town. Bailey is thrilled to have grandma here to take care of her and (bonus?) Karen just had this exact same procedure performed on her hand (arthritis-related) earlier this year. So she’s completely up on the wound care, etc. I’m still feeling very conflicted about leaving town two days after Bailey’s surgery and I don’t know how I’m going to NOT fret about it the whole time. But hopefully I can compartmentalize my emotions somewhat for HM’s sake.

Please think of my baby Bailey tomorrow! I don’t know exactly what to expect from her recovery, but she has a vicodin prescription and they said she’ll probably be very uncomfortable with pain for a week or so.