Drew's Accident and Surgery

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Drew's Accident

Drew went snowboarding in a friend's back yard on Sunday 2/11 after his confirmation retreat in the afternoon. It was a very cold day and the ground was rock hard. This friend's father had built a half pipe in their back yard so Drew was out with 3 of his friends doing 360's off the pipe. Apparently Drew attempted a back 360 and did not quite land it the way he had planned. He came crashing down after being about 7 feet in the air to land on his right arm, snapping it in two. He called home to have me come get him, when I asked if it was because he was too cold he proceeded to explain that he broke his arm. Rob and I went and got him and the ride to Manchester Memorial Hospital was a very long and painful one. Once there we lucked out because the emergency room was quiet. He was in having x-rays within fifteen minutes of arriving. Then went straight in a room where an Orthopedic Doctor was on duty. He broke his arm about two inches below his shoulder and it needed to be set. Well they put him in a hanging cast, the weight of the cast was supposed to pull the bones into alignment. By the way, they did give him a shot of Demerol before they took his shirt off and I have to admit he did very well through all of this, he must have a fairly high tolerance for pain. After he had the cast put on he was sent home with a prescription for painkillers and a muscle relaxer.

The first few days he pretty much drifted in and out of sleep. We took him back to the doctors office for a second visit on Thursday 2/15 where they told us he would need pins put in his arm. This was something we knew was most likely going to have to be done since his cast ended about the same place it was broken. We feel they should have done this in the first place since we lost a whole week of recuperating and now have to go though a lot more pain just as it seemed to be easing up. He went in for day surgery on Tuesday 2/20. He was in surgery for five and a half hours and required three orthopedic surgeons to put his arm back correctly. The top part of the arm had rotated forward away from the rest of the arm. The surgeon couldn't keep it in place to set the pins. Drew required a five inch arc of an incision in his arm requiring 18 staples to close and three long pins that stick out the top of his arm at the shoulder. After five hours in recovery, he finally came home. They hooked him up to a novocaine drip to help ease the pain for a couple of days (along with muscle relaxers and pain medication).

He was pretty miserable the next 48 hours. When we went back to the doctor on Thursday for a change of dressing and checkup, we found out that the hospital never turned on the novocaine drip before sending him home! Drew's been sleeping in a recliner since the accident (that we had to buy specifically for Drew since we didn't have a need for one before). Eileen has been sleeping on the couch in the living room with Drew during most of the past three weeks to help him out. He has been recovering fine until a week after the surgery when he had stopped taking the muscle relaxers. He woke up on Monday in the middle of the night in terrible pain when the muscles in his arm spasmed and knotted up. He was ini agony. He's back on the muscle relaxers for now. His staples come out next Tuesday 3/9 and the pins in about two weeks after that. Also he was not be put in a cast, but in a sling only. This way he would be able to start to write after a few weeks. Recovery is supposed to be about eleven weeks. It looks as though lacrosse season may not be an option this year. At this point Drew is thinking about giving up free style part of snowboarding, we will see as time goes by.