Boys will be Boys

September 23, 2003-November 21, 2010

I believed the phrase "Boys will be Boys" meant

*newborn baby boys pee on the wall every time you take their diapers off

*toddler boys prefer Thomas trains to Cabbage Patch Dolls, but still enjoy a daily dose of Dora

*preschool boys eat, live and breathe Star Wars

*primary school boys love Harry Potter and Magic Treehouse books, but will tolerate Junie B. Jones

*boys of all ages love Legos

November 22, 2010

The phrase Boys will be Boys actually means boys will jump off a piece of furniture causing fractures in both tibias. The only evidence of this is a mysterious limp, and that after two weeks of medical appointments, xrays, blood tests and an MRI, will be diagnosed as toddler fractures probably caused by an attempt to jump off something.

After growing up in a house where the G:B ratio was 4:2, God decided that I should have Will first, an intro to boys, the pre-algebra of boys if you will, before giving us Collin. Boy. All boy. The algebra of boys.

He started limping on Tuesday, November 9th. He didn't seem to be in pain at all but he was definitely limping. Mike took him in the following day and he was diagnosed with a limb length discrepancy, but that just didn't sit right. One leg grew a centimeter overnight, without the other leg?

We are blessed to have a wonderful friend, Mark, who happens to be an orthopedic resident at the Mayo Clinic. By the following Wednesday we were on the phone with a resident on the service of the limb length specialist at Mayo, Dr. Stans. He was concerned about an infection in the hip so we brought Collin to the ER at St. Marys. They took some standing xrays, ruled out an infection and sent us home with orders to see Dr. Stans. Dr. Stan's resident, Dr. Abdel called the following evening to tell us they found a fracture on the xrays and to report to the cast room in the morning.

I laid awake that night trying to imagine life with a two-year-old in a full leg cast.

When we got to the cast room the next morning they took more xrays and could not find the location of the fracture. What they saw on the xray could be evidence of a variety of things, simple things like infection or arthritis and scary things like leukemia. They found this on the right leg. He's been limping on his left. They then sent us to the children's lab for bloodwork.

I left the cast room wishing I was leaving with a two-year-old in a full leg cast.

On Friday night we learned that the blood counts were normal, ruling out leukemia! There were two other levels outside the normal range indicating a range of problems, this time on the infection/arthritis end of things. We were to be scheduled for an MRI on Monday.

We reported to St. Marys at 6:30 on Monday morning. At 8:30 I held my baby while they put him to sleep and handed him over to the professionals. We would be hearing something within the hour and would be there when he woke up. At 11:30 we were finally reunited, numb to the possibilities awaiting us.

At 5:30pm Dr. Stans called. They found fractures on both legs, explaining the limp on the left and the xray results on the right. Toddler fractures are common, but somewhat unusual in both legs, probably the result of jumping off something.

The phrase Boys will be Boys means finding relief that it's just two broken legs.