Not a "Humerus" Week

Macayla's arm is broken! She was getting a bath and as we were repositioning her there was a loud pop. Macayla did not flinch or seem in distress. We checked her shoulders and hips and everything seemed fine. We commonly hear pops in her joints when moving her around. She did not show any signs of pain and even smiled when I talked to her. She seemed to be a bit sleepy, but she has continued to have "big" seizures this week and we attributed her lethargy to those. But about an hour later, our nurse checked again and noticed Macayla definitely had a break above the right elbow in the humorous, make that humerus. That's the big bone of the arm. She was reacting to it and was in definite pain. The swelling began.

Unfortunately, Macayla continued to have seizures throughout the day along with a lot of myoclonic jerks that affected her arms, head and legs. The jerks hurt the arm more. Fortunately, xray confirmed the bones were not displaced so they were still lined up. It was a spiral fracture caused by twisting. We still don't know how that happened. We are thankful for our nurse's attention to detail. She has a special-needs child of her own and understands non-verbal cues intuitively with Macayla. Now Macayla has a bright green cast on her from the armpit to her fingers. Jacob is excited to sign it once she is not so tender. But the myoclonic jerks continue and even in that arm. We are trying to keep the pain meds on board as the cast immobilizes, but it cannot stop the muscles from jerking. Our prayer today is that the seizures would stop.

The neurologist has changed her medications in hopes of getting better control of the seizures. It will take about a week to get her built up to the full dose of Depakote. We used it about four years ago and it did not help. But then she was only having petit mal seizures. Her seizures are different now and hopefully the Depakote will be a good match for them. Historically, Macayla has shown improvement with medication changes for a "honeymoon" period and then her condition returns to its previous level. The meds have never kept up with her seizures. But this girl is full of surprises so we will have to wait and see.

She is smiling and happy this morning and we will do our best to help her stay that way.