Sticks and Stones will Break Their Bones
... (But, so will monkey bars)
The day after any long holiday weekend is always a busy time in medical practices. Sick and injured people tend to wait for the office to open on Tuesday, instead of going to a crowded emergency room or urgent care facility. As soon as our phones were turned on Tuesday morning after Labor Day Weekend it never stopped ringing.
In our practice, we have at least six individuals, sometimes more, assigned to our busy phones. On a typical, ten-provider day in our practice, we may see 300 patients and handle a few hundred phone calls asking advice or requesting medication refills. To make matters even more chaotic, we instituted an open access policy earlier this year -- any patient that requests to be seen today will be seen today. The patients love it; the providers are less enthusiastic thus far.
In addition to my responsibilities with WebMD, I work three 12-13 hour shifts (my choice) per week, so I tend to get more same-day, urgent care visits, such as injuries or lacerations.
Yesterday was a bumper day for injured children; I saw six children that experienced the awesome effects of gravity -- three fractures and three lacerations. One little girl (see picture), broke both forearm bones in both arms. She gave me permission to post her picture.
The last time that I treated a double-double arm fracture was my son, Ben, who recently broke his arm again at my youngest son's wedding. This little girl is adapting to her limited mobility just fine and is proud of her choice of a pink and purple cast. The other two children were victims of our friend, and the friend of all successful pediatric orthopedists, the playground monkey bars.
Children are risk-takers. The older an individual becomes, the more likely they will exercise caution due to their experience of childhood. I remember a sled-riding expedition many years ago where we took along one of our kid's friends -- a boy that had never gone sled-riding before. When we arrived at our favorite sledding spot, we were amazed on how quickly he learned. He was really catching air -- flying through air like an experienced Olympic ski jumper. When we commented to the other kids about how well he was doing, the response was, "Well, he doesn't know what will happen if he crashes."
Children seek out hazards. If they don't exist, they will create them. An example was our sliding board into the pool. I bought it through the newspaper (perhaps from a former owner with more sense), and had it installed when the kids were at school. They were having a great time when I suddenly took notice of some unusual cheering-on. When I looked out of my window, I spied our oldest son (Incidentally, the one that made the comment above) sitting in a lawn chair precariously balanced at the top of this ten foot water slide, preparing for his Evel Knievel stunt debut. Apparently, after twenty minutes of sliding down the slide, it wasn't dangerous enough.
In my clinic, I see the same with skateboards and scooters. Give a kid a new skateboard and he will create a dangerous ramp within the hour.
I did my share of crazy, mindless acts as a child, too. Too lazy to walk down the stairs, I would jump out of my attic bedroom into a snow drift. With found objects, we would create any number of vehicles to sail down our step hill.
Before the era of helmet use, three of us, clutching to one PeeWee Herman-type bicycle once slammed into the side of a moving car, safely sailing over it and landing in some hedge (laughing, of course). My friend, Terry and I, threw darts at each other, protected only by our homemade cardboard shields. We stopped after one of the darts stuck in Terry's forehead.
My mother was oblivious and never once gave the "You'll put your eye out"speech. Her clever method of behavior modification was to just let us get hurt. Granted, children are inherently experiential...those that survive, of course.
Related Topics: Pool & Spa Hazards, Make Your Backyard Safe
Technorati Tags: playground, pool, children, safety
The day after any long holiday weekend is always a busy time in medical practices. Sick and injured people tend to wait for the office to open on Tuesday, instead of going to a crowded emergency room or urgent care facility. As soon as our phones were turned on Tuesday morning after Labor Day Weekend it never stopped ringing.
In our practice, we have at least six individuals, sometimes more, assigned to our busy phones. On a typical, ten-provider day in our practice, we may see 300 patients and handle a few hundred phone calls asking advice or requesting medication refills. To make matters even more chaotic, we instituted an open access policy earlier this year -- any patient that requests to be seen today will be seen today. The patients love it; the providers are less enthusiastic thus far.
In addition to my responsibilities with WebMD, I work three 12-13 hour shifts (my choice) per week, so I tend to get more same-day, urgent care visits, such as injuries or lacerations.
Yesterday was a bumper day for injured children; I saw six children that experienced the awesome effects of gravity -- three fractures and three lacerations. One little girl (see picture), broke both forearm bones in both arms. She gave me permission to post her picture.The last time that I treated a double-double arm fracture was my son, Ben, who recently broke his arm again at my youngest son's wedding. This little girl is adapting to her limited mobility just fine and is proud of her choice of a pink and purple cast. The other two children were victims of our friend, and the friend of all successful pediatric orthopedists, the playground monkey bars.
Children are risk-takers. The older an individual becomes, the more likely they will exercise caution due to their experience of childhood. I remember a sled-riding expedition many years ago where we took along one of our kid's friends -- a boy that had never gone sled-riding before. When we arrived at our favorite sledding spot, we were amazed on how quickly he learned. He was really catching air -- flying through air like an experienced Olympic ski jumper. When we commented to the other kids about how well he was doing, the response was, "Well, he doesn't know what will happen if he crashes."
Children seek out hazards. If they don't exist, they will create them. An example was our sliding board into the pool. I bought it through the newspaper (perhaps from a former owner with more sense), and had it installed when the kids were at school. They were having a great time when I suddenly took notice of some unusual cheering-on. When I looked out of my window, I spied our oldest son (Incidentally, the one that made the comment above) sitting in a lawn chair precariously balanced at the top of this ten foot water slide, preparing for his Evel Knievel stunt debut. Apparently, after twenty minutes of sliding down the slide, it wasn't dangerous enough.
In my clinic, I see the same with skateboards and scooters. Give a kid a new skateboard and he will create a dangerous ramp within the hour.
I did my share of crazy, mindless acts as a child, too. Too lazy to walk down the stairs, I would jump out of my attic bedroom into a snow drift. With found objects, we would create any number of vehicles to sail down our step hill.
Before the era of helmet use, three of us, clutching to one PeeWee Herman-type bicycle once slammed into the side of a moving car, safely sailing over it and landing in some hedge (laughing, of course). My friend, Terry and I, threw darts at each other, protected only by our homemade cardboard shields. We stopped after one of the darts stuck in Terry's forehead.
My mother was oblivious and never once gave the "You'll put your eye out"speech. Her clever method of behavior modification was to just let us get hurt. Granted, children are inherently experiential...those that survive, of course.
Related Topics: Pool & Spa Hazards, Make Your Backyard Safe
Technorati Tags: playground, pool, children, safety
7 Comments:
Well, what about mobbing and gangstalking? When are they going to do something about that, put it in the news, talk about it on the radio and tv. There is police sponsored gangstalking which you can look up on the internet. The book "L.A. Secret Police" tells a lot about what the police are really like.
Monkey bars are dangerous. I have had two children get hurt at the day care I work at from monkey bars. The other monkey bars (as we call them) we have are a half circle on the ground and the children climb up them and then sit on top of it. Some of the younger children have slipped on the bars and gotten hurt. I have done some foolish stunts as a child though. I think you need to let children experiment and let them find out the hard way. They learn some motor skills when they climb and play on playground equipment.
My dislike of the outdoors allowed me to make through childhood and adulthood (so far) without any injured limbs.
Just read the post about your brother. Glad to hear he's ok.
Monkey bars are dangerous, at least for me they are, when in kindergarten I was running to them at full speed, tripped and my chin hit a bar unfortunately I had my tongue out also. I ended up bitting my tongue in half. This was before the scare of HIV so the teacher had me in the middle of the playground bleeding everywhere before I got taken to the nurse. They reattached the part of my tongue that I had cut at the ER. I couldn't talk for days, which my Mom thought was a god send.
Deja vu! I almost thought that was my daughter from about 12 years ago with her pink and purple casts, which she recieved courtesy of monkey bars! Although my poor daughter's casts were both above her elbows, meaning she needed help to do ANYTHING until she got the shortened casts. Sure put a crimp in her summer plans.
I have a similar problem with the broken bones. The only problem is that it is my 73 year old sister-in-law. She loves the pink cast, but the bone has not healing after 6 weeks. She wants to know what she can do so that the bone will heal and she can still function. I saw the x-ray and the break was still very visible. Can you help us on this?
When I was in fifth grade which was actually last year there was a boy in my class who suposably could do "anything", jumped off a huge slide and nothing happened. When he did it the 3rd time (I think it was) he tried to use his arms from stopping him to hit the ground face first and he ended up breaking both of his forearms and a elbow. He had his casts removed about a half of a month later. I myself have never ever broken a bone yet and hopefully never will.
Post a Comment