My son was downright giddy as we crossed the parking lot and headed into the doctor's office. That happy feeling sadly didn't last long (see expression below).
The saw scared him; the people getting the cast off couldn't avoid touching his uber-sensitive hands; and then there were the pins.
The sorrowful look on his face in that picture is not from being skeeved out (as I very much was). It was his simply trying to relax and gather his bearings after the pain they inflicted on him just to get to this point.
Being careful not to hit the pins with the saw, they cut out the top portion of his cast and lifted it off, with the idea being the bottom part could then slide off. The problem with that well-intentioned plan was that the bottom part was A) barely wide enough to fit around his arm under normal circumstances and B) not nearly roomy enough to slide around his pins, which were also completely tangled up in all the gauze and padding inside the cast.
When the woman who was taking off the cast at first ran into trouble, she called in a man, whom, in a misguided effort at lightheartedness, she called "Big John." He was big alright -- and strong. And he used every bit of that muscle power to tug and pull and stretch and try to pry that cast off my son. And since the cast that he was manipulating like it was a particularly tough side of beef was hung up on the pins that were embedded in my son's flesh and bone, it hurt a touch. And by a "touch," I mean that my son was literally crying and begging him to stop. It was utterly heartbreaking.
(What's a little funny is that before this medieval torture experiment, my son, who had heard the woman refer to the man as "Big John," told me he wanted to change his name to "Big John." John, he said, was a good name, but the "Big" part made it extra awesome, and henceforth he would be known as "Big John." I didn't ask, but I'm guessing he might have changed his mind about that once the cast was off.)
The cast did finally come off, though, and the doctor reported excellent results from his x-ray, so out came the pins. While that part would seem, on the surface, to be the more painful bit of the day, particularly since it involved nothing more than a big pair of pliers and some gauze, it turned out to be a piddly nuisance compared to getting the cast off.... for my son, anyway.
I, on the other hand, did not fare as well. I'm not the type who can't handle the sight of blood, but there was something about seeing these pins embedded in my son's arm that really made me queasy. And it just got worse and worse the more I thought about it. And then very nearly reached a catastrophic crescendo when they started pulling those things out. I can't say for sure how I looked at the time, but I will say that the nurse very quickly brought me a chair at one point. I can only imagine that I was turning either a pale shade of white or a putrid shade of green.
My son made it through with flying colors, though, and is now cast-free, though he still has to wear a sling and still can't pursue any of the standard little-boy activities until his arm heals a little more. They warned me at the beginning this was going to be a long recovery, so while I hope the cast was the worst part (since the break and surgery at least), it's certainly not the last.
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