In honor of my son’s 11th birthday, I offer you a story about how healing is hardly ever a straight line...except this one time. You can listen to me read it or read it below.
Magnus learns to paddle around in his spica cast
About ten years ago, when he was one-and-a-half, my son Magnus broke his femur. I didn’t see it happen. But here’s how I found out.
I arrived after work to pick him up at day care, and he was laying quiet and meek in his crib. Why wasn’t he up and playing with the other little ones? Why wasn’t he orchestrating a brigade of plastic tractors? He fell, they told me. He wouldn’t stop crying, they told me. They couldn’t see anything wrong with him, but since he was inconsolable, they put him in a crib. Sometimes babies just cry, they said.
The moment I set my work tote down and lifted him out of that crib, my toddler wailed. He gripped my neck. I felt his warm cheek against mine and it was sticky with tears. The moment I lowered him into his car seat, he screamed. The moment I cradled him on the couch at home, sitting close to my husband, he screamed. We were frantic, trying to puzzle out what was wrong when I realized: it’s the cradling, it’s that shape meant to comfort, not contort. Something is wrong with his leg. He just didn’t have the language to tell me.
We raced down our hilly, rural road to the hospital. An X-ray showed this diagonal dark line across his upper right femur. Femur. Even the name felt too big for this little blond human. The break was as slim and as long as a cat’s whisker. And I wondered: How does something so tiny cause so much hurt? I knew nothing about the body’s fragile infrastructure.
In the exam room, Magnus was calm and still, clutching his stuffed beaver. I lay my head on his hospital pillow, and pressed my cheek against his. I saw this mix of exhaustion and dread in his pale blue eyes. Like any mom, I wished I could spirit his hurt away into my own body. What a brave and good and strong boy you are.
An ER doctor appeared with news.
He’ll need a full body cast. The pediatric orthopedists are on their way.
Did you say full body cast?
Yes. It’s called a spica cast.
Spica. SPY-kah. See, toddlers are too wiggly for a regular cast. For a thigh bone to mend, they must be immobilized, ankle to arm pit, legs splayed, knees a bent, kind of like a tiny mummified cowboy. The cast stays on for six weeks.
I asked him: How will a one-and-a-half-year old handle a full body cast for six weeks? How will I?
We’ll walk you through that tomorrow.
Nurses started an IV drip of painkillers. Magnus softened as the medicine swam through his slender little veins. I held his hand. I remember it was no bigger than a tiny apricot. His gauzy eyes swept the ceiling.
Two pediatric orthopedic residents arrived. They worked like these brawny spiders, weaving bands around my boy’s leg to stabilize him overnight. Tomorrow, they would place him under anesthesia and put him in the spica cast.
The next morning, my husband and I watched as they wheeled Magnus into the operating room. And when they rolled him out, I split apart.
My boy, still asleep, was plastered in blue from his feet to his chest. His knees were bent, legs spread apart, as if he were riding a pony to the sky. An opening a few inches wide was left for him to pee and poop. A diaper had been tucked into this space, and a bigger diaper wrapped around it, the tabs looped around his giant plaster hips. His blond hair was matted, his lips were in a rosy pucker. I slid my index finger beneath his bangs and smoothed the hair over his ears. I pressed my lips to his ear and whispered your mama loves you so much.
When he woke up, he was not quite sure what the universe had done to him. He reached for me but found he couldn’t sit up and cried. I leaned over his bed, threading my arms through the IV tubes, and cupped his face in my hands. I told him he was in a cast, and that it would help his leg get better. I would have to explain many times why he had to stay that way so long.
A nurse came in with stacks of instructions. She showed us how to change his diapers, how to keep the cast clean. She demonstrated how to lift him without straining our backs, how to prop pillows under his head while he slept to balance his heavier lower body.
The snow began falling soon after we got home from the hospital and didn’t stop for a month. Our neighbor drove his tractor down the road to plow our driveway and Magnus went bonkers with joy watching that green machine scoop and dump. We lost power for days. Going outside with a boy I could barely heft up stairs was out of the question. We watched the world go white from the windows.
I wracked my brain for ways to entertain him. I set up stations around the house. A bean bag chair where he ate chocolate pudding and watched Bob the Builder. A blanket on the living room floor, where I spread out balls of Play-Doh, plastic bowls full of water, measuring cups, construction paper, pots of finger paints. He squished and poured and smeared until holding himself up was too much. He looked like a broken boat lying on his tummy, his blue legs splayed and feet in the air, his forearms a pale little prow.
My mother flew in to help. She brought two blue plastic scooters with wheels. They were squares about the size of a bathroom scale, something you might use to move a heavy box. We lay Magnus on one and taught him to paddle himself across the floor. We took turns on the second scooter, chasing him around the kitchen and dining room. I loved watching him gain control over his own movements, building up a kind of speed I couldn’t give him. I loved watching my mother sail past me across the linoleum.
When he grew bored or uncomfortable, I’d hoist him on my hip and walk around the house, narrating the day, rubbing my nose on his to make him laugh.
And still…. we had weeks to go. The snow drifted across our driveway. Snowy white skirts circled the front steps. It erased the features of our landscape. I felt entombed. But I tried to remember, you know, Magnus couldn’t move anything below his breast bone. Who was truly entombed?
At last, this eternity of six weeks passed. The final X-ray showed an unblemished thigh bone, as if someone had simply erased the slim dark whisper of the break. Children’s bones heal faster and better than adults’. Their bones are still growing, and when they break, they grow and mend all at once until in some cases there’s no sign anything happened at all.
The orthopedic tech used a circular saw with small teeth that vibrated to chew through the layers of Magnus’ spica cast. The sight of it made Magnus cry. I smoothed his forehead and gave him a wide smile, hiding my own fear. The tech pressed the saw just under his armpit and slowly buzzed his way down the torso, the hip, then the leg, spraying us with a light dust. He wedged his hands in the crevice and cracked the whole cast open. There was my pale, skinny boy, naked and free. His face practically flamed with joy.
His legs, immobilized for so long, had weakened. We spent hours holding his hand, helping him take tiny new steps. He had to learn to walk again.
During those six weeks Magnus was encased in a cast, I felt trapped, too. On some days, I felt every second tick through my body. How do I keep this toddler entertained and clean and safe for the next hour? For the next week? Nearly ten years later, the trauma and boredom of those weeks collapse into a straight line. His bone broke. His bone healed. He learned to walk again. A rupture with a beginning, middle and end.
I’m thinking about this story because, right now, the world is on fire. I look around, and I would give almost anything for a rupture with a simple resolution these days. For a beginning, middle, and end. A narrative like a bone and a cast. A cat’s whisker of a break to immobilize and erase.
Listen: Full body cast