April 18th, 2012
Branson learned a valuable lesson on April 16th, 2012... If you have to stop while riding your bike use your brakes, not your face.
Here's how it happened...
Branson was invited to Boston's house to play. He grabbed his bike and waited for me to walk him around the corner. It's only 2 houses until the corner, then about 4 more houses to Boston's. I walked him to the corner (like I always do) and watched him ride down the hill to Boston's house. When he was half way there I thought to myself, slow down, slow down. He was going waaay too fast. Just as I was about to yell at him to use his brakes, he turned the handlebar 90 degrees to his left, hit the lip of their driveway, and flew over the handlebars and into the cement pavers. His chin hit on the left side and upon impact he simultaneously snapped the right side of his jaw.
I found myself running down the street and scooping him off the pavement. He was scraped and bleeding on his hands, knees and chin. He was screaming about pain from his chin and his jaw. I was actually surprised to hear my son complain of pain coming from his jaw... that's not a normal place for any child to identify pain.
I carried him home and immediately put him in the bath. I figured if I could wash all the blood and cement off of him I would have a better idea what we were dealing with. Once he was clean, dry and he had stopped crying, I bandaged up his cuts and scrapes and laid him in bed. I noticed that his face had started to swell on one side so I gave him Ibuprofen and propped an ice pack against his cheek.
When I finally felt like I had the situation under control, I decided to take him in for X-rays. (We had to go to the pediatrician first to get the recommendation for X-rays. It was a pain.) His X-rays were apparently inconclusive. I was dissatisfied with that answer so I called the doctor that performed my TMJ surgery several years ago and asked if he would see my son. They said if I could make it to their office before it closed, Branson could be seen by the doctor. I drove so fast I felt like a was flying low :)
The surgeon wanted to do his own 360 degree X-ray. I'm so glad he did! He barely glanced at it and announced, "It's busted!" (I'm not even kidding. He really said that.)
He narrowly missed having a rod put in his jaw and wiring it shut. But because he is such a little guy at only 43 pounds, he recommended a liquid diet for 2 weeks, then soft foods for 1 or 2 weeks after that. Finding food he could ingest was not an easy task. Everything had to go in the blender so he could drink it through a straw. I put all his food in the blender - from Progresso soup to lasagna! I watered everything down in the blender until it was liquified. He also had a lot of fruit smoothies, Malt-O-Meal, and even baby food. To get adequate vitamins I'd sneak vegetables and vegetable juice in all his blended meals. And I fed him around the clock so he wouldn't lose weight.
I took him in to see the doctor every few days at first, then once a week, then again after a month and so on. Miraculously it healed all on its own with no intervention, no re braking, and no surgery. He's a little miracle!
These pictures were taken 3 days after the accident. His swelling at this point had already started to decrease, but you can still see how crooked it looks.
I was proud of him for having so much courage. He's one tough little kid. Maybe that's why we call him "Toughy".
