Tanner's collarbone

Tanner finally broke a bone. The fact that we made it six years without a broken bone is remarkable to me.

One night, some neighbor kids were playing in the backyard. The boys are all older than Tanner and do certain things that Tanner probably shouldn't do. But we don't stop him. I figure he'll learn his own limits and listen to his body. This day, the older boys had been scaling the side of our playground. Tanner joined them. I think the game had some element of tag so a kid tried to tag Tanner as he scaled the side of it. He worried more about getting tagged so let go before realizing his other hand wasn't holding on. He flipped upside down before falling and landed on his head. I didn't see the fall but I saw him right after. Tanner was pretty embarrassed that he fell with the older boys around him so he came inside and rested. Normally, he hops right up and goes back out. This time, he stayed on the couch. I was worried about a possible concussion with the height that he fell from. But he kept answering all of my questions and didn't seem to have a concussion.

Later that night, he said his shoulder hurt. I figured it was a little bruised from his fall. I didn't see any visible bruising or bumps. I've never broken a bone and have no idea what it looks like. He had a little trouble falling asleep that night but nothing too major.

The next day, he didn't want to use his left arm. However, he wanted to go to school. That afternoon, we met some other neighbors at a park. Tanner was holding his arm the whole time and definitely not using it. When the other moms took a look, we noticed he moved away when we tried to touch his collar bone. Tanner knew his soccer team started the next day. When we asked him about his arm, his response was, "It's fine. I can play soccer." I think he wanted to play soccer so badly that he didn't tell us how bad his arm hurt.

The next morning, I called the doctor and got an appointment later in the morning. I rushed him in with Gemma and Lydia. Before they even took x-rays, the doctor says, "yep, I will go grab a sling." She knew it was broken. Sure enough, the xrays showed a broken collar bone. It wasn't broken in two, so that's good. But the fracture was pretty long/big.

He was in the sling for five weeks. At night, it had to be wrapped up with a huge ace bandage. He struggled some with asking for help on small tasks like getting socks on or zipping coats up. His teacher mentioned how Tanner was grateful for help from his classmates but didn't love asking for help.

To cope, Tanner found lots of sports he could still play. He used his soccer ball to play basketball because it weighs less than his basketball. He could shoot better with the lighter ball and only one hand. Pretty resourceful!

After five long weeks, he finally had a re-check and new x-rays. It was healed enough to take the sling off. One week left of no contact sports and he should be all set to go.