Break a Leg

OK, my life has caught up to me. No time for silly jokes, and laughing about how crazy everything is with six kids while somehow finding time to sit down and write a post. Come to think of it, I really don’t sit down much anymore. I kind of fall down at the end of the day. Also, nothing has really seemed that funny to me recently. But I guess that’s what happens when two out of your six children are in leg casts. Yes, one-third of the Schwartz kids are down a leg.

My son Barry—one of the 9 month old twins—fell off a booster seat in Florida and broke his femur. “Welcome to having boys,” the doctor in the ER said to me. He is in a cast that goes from his toes to his diaper line. And Caroline, my 9 year old, is in one of those black Velcro support boots. I don’t really know exactly what she has. She hurt her foot in gymnastics, we think. The bone x-ray was clear, but the MRI showed something that the orthopedist said needed one of these boots. “She has a something something something itis of her cartilage,” was how I heard the orthopedist’s report. “Basically, it’s like a pothole,” he tried to explain to me in a language I would understand. Ok, thanks, that helps a lot.

“What happened to Caroline?” everyone is asking, and the honest answer is I have no clue. But, luckily, the orthopedist seems to feel she’ll be better in two weeks. 

Barry’s injury was scarier naturally since he’s a baby. The worst part though was that when he first flung himself down on the ground in a booster seat attached to a chair, he seemed ok. (Yes, he jerked himself forward and brought the whole chair down with him, while his dainty little sister looked on from her own booster seat with a puzzled expression that seemed to say, “what could possibly have led you to do that?”). Sure, he cried, but he did not have a bruise, he did not pass out, or vomit, or do any of the other things to make me think concussion, injury, get myself to an emergency room. He calmed down, had a bath, and went to sleep.

The next morning he started screaming, squeezing his eyes together like he was in agony. Something is majorly wrong with this child is all that was flashing through my head. My husband was on the beach with my other kids. Without a phone. I was in an apartment complex in Miami, where the onsite doctor was an herbalist who, the secretary told me, would love to help but was “in the middle of a conference” and passed along the message that I “should go right to the emergency room.” It’s great to have an on-site doctor.

I was an anxious wreck. I was convinced he was having some internal bleeding, some major head injury. I proceeded to the emergency room alone. I wanted my husband to come with me, to calm me down, to hold my hand and function for both of us if something was really wrong, but when you have six kids, you can’t take trips to the emergency room together. What are you going to do with the other 5? Especially the other 9 month old? You must divide and conquer.

The trip to the hospital seemed endless—but that might have been because the herbalist sent me to the wrong hospital at first. When I arrived at the right ER, almost an hour and a half later, I was rushed in. “Get a doctor in here fast.” “This child is not right.” “He doesn’t look good.” “Get him on a heart monitor.” These were the things the nurses and administrators said to me as I sat holding my crying son. I am going to pass out is all I was thinking. My heart was beating so fast. Then the doctor came in, started fiddling with Barry’s hands and legs and when he moved his right leg, he cringed and shrieked in pain. “I think he broke his leg,” he said, "let’s get an x-ray.” And the x-ray quickly confirmed it. He broke his femur. I was elated. A leg heals. He was going to be ok.

In the Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, an amazing facility if any of you should ever need it, they put a temporary cast on him just to get us back to New York, where I could then go to a Manhattan orthopedist to oversee Barry’s full recovery. The nice thing about Florida is how close it is to New York, right? Wrong. Not this time. We were held on the runway for three hours—with a baby on each of our laps--and in case you weren’t sure, it’s not so easy holding a baby on your lap in an airplane seat when that baby has a broken leg. Oh, and the airline did not have any edible snack they could offer us or our kids—the last bags of pretzels were given to the row in front of us. Ouch. My older girls were so hungry they threw down a few pouches of the babies’ pear and mangos. Rob and I threw down double shots of vodka and Bloody Mary mix. Just to give you a sense of where my head was, I felt nothing. Rob fell asleep.

But eventually we got home. Barry’s now sporting a bright blue cast, in which all of the ladies in his life have signed their names. (His sisters really wanted me to get him a pink or purple one, but I refused.) Yes, it is hard to tolerate the smell of his foot, and every time I change his diaper and see the clearly discolored rim of foam by the diaper line, I want to throw up and rip it off, but I’m trying to be good. The orthopedist told me “it smells much better than most casts” and not to worry, “it’s just pee” that has left a brown residue on the cast. Yeah, right.

On a side note, Barry’s twin sister Eliana has actually blossomed during Barry’s limited activity. Normally the more animated of the two, Barry has been kind of pinned down, and Eliana has enjoyed her time in the spotlight.  I can’t help but notice how she has been showing off her rolling and crawling skills. She’s been bouncing extra high in the ultrasaucer, flailing her legs in excitement whenever anyone comes into the room, and splashing around a little extra in the bath while Barry looks on enviously from the bath rug during his boring sponge bath.

Unfortunately for Elie, Barry’s femur seems to be healing quicker than they thought and the cast should come off this week. As soon as I have finished bathing him four or five times, and then another four or five times, and soaking his unwashed leg and foot for several hours, I will allow him to resume the activity of a normal almost- 10-month old boy.  Judging from the power of his fall, and from the way he is managing to still get around in a cast, I will brace myself for the future. And so should Eliana.

Oh and did I mention that Barry has also made several trips to the allergist during these weeks of immobility? First he had a bad reaction to eggs. Then to mustard. Turns out he’s allergic to those and to cashews and pistachios too. He also has really bad eczema, and most recently he’s had a bad case of pink eye. Calm, quiet and happy Eliana has no known allergies, and not a rough patch of skin on her body.

But, don’t get me wrong, it’s great to finally have a boy.