Broken arm

As many of you already know, we got to experience the Dominican medical system a little bit lately. Logan fell down while running at school. He got a green stick fracture to his right arm. This quickly turned into quite the experience! He PE teacher, Mr. Theo, took him to the Ross University Health Clinic and called us. One of the doctors there wrapped his arm up and sent us to Roseau where we could get x-rays taken. It's an hour drive from Portsmouth to Roseau and then there was some waiting time at the radiology clinic. (Photo to the left was taken while we were waiting for xrays.) There was some misunderstanding about what was to happen from there. The radiologist was supposed to let us know that the arm was broken & needed a cast which would have sent us to a specialist in Roseau for a cast. Instead they left us with the impression that there was no fracture & no cast was needed. So we drove back to the Health Clinic at Ross in Portsmouth to find out we should have gotten a cast in Roseau. Since the clinic is not set up to do casts, they sent us to the Portsmouth Hospital. Let's just say it's NOT like a hospital in the US! We did have to wait again for our turn. Finally a doctor there put a cast on Logan's arm. His little accident happened in the morning by 8:30 or 8:45 am and it was 5 pm or later before we had the cast on his arm. (Photo below taken on the steps of the hospital as we were leaving from getting the cast on his arm.)

The doctors originally thought that the cast could come off after 3 weeks. We were referred to the specialist back in Roseau for removal of the cast. We took most of another whole day to make the trip to Roseau for this. Apparently appointments are not used here so we showed up at the clinic shortly after the doctor had told me the day before that he would be there. It turned out that there was some emergency that morning that he had to attend so it was after noon before he ever made it to his clinic. That was a long wait with 2 little boys who had more interesting things on their minds than waiting at a doctor's office! The doctor removed the cast (it was so loose that he just slipped it over Logan's hand to remove it) and examined the arm. It wasn't quite healed so on went a new cast for 2 more weeks. The doctor gave orders to just remove the cast here in Portsmouth on March 12 - 5 weeks after the break happened. (Photo below taken after the new cast was put on his arm.)











On the day we were to have the cast taken off, we took Logan to the Health Clinic at Ross University who referred us back to the Portsmouth Hospital to take the cast off. So back we went for a trip all over the hospital - with waits in between each place that we were sent. Finally, after about an hour and a half there we were told that the machine for taking the cast off was broken. They offered no other solution, just that they couldn't remove the cast. So we went back to the Ross Health Clinic looking for someone to remove the cast. There we were told that the only other machine for removing a cast on this island is at the hospital in Roseau! By this time we'd spent almost 2 hours trying to find someone to take the cast off. Now it was going to be another 2 hours of driving plus however long we had to wait in the Roseau hospital for someone to remove the cast & probably 30 seconds to actually cut the cast off. I wasn't really looking forward to making a trip there - possibly only to be told that their machine was broken too. Since the doctor had already written orders to remove the cast & no doctor was supposed to be looking at it nor were more xrays needed, we did the American thing....we found another way to take the cast off. :-) Lyndle and a friend found some trauma shears and cut the cast off themselves. By the way, these are the old plaster casts that they use here. It was pretty easy to cut in the palm of the hand and up by the elbow, but it was pretty hard in between. Good thing those men with the shears were tough. :-)

Logan's arm is doing well. He was a little nervous to have the cast off at first but he quickly started acting like he's never broken a bone in his body. By the next day he was showing me a new trick on the playground where he could swing from a rope by the monkey bars. That right arm doesn't seem to be too weak.