Broken Bones

August, 1991

Recently my three year old grandson, Christopher (Laubacher) jumped off a stool while vacationing at Lake Tahoe and broke his arm, a green stick fracture.  After emergency treatment in Tahoe, Christopher came to L.A. and asked his Grandpa doctor to please make his arm better.

Casts for green stick fractures were also earned by family members Kathy at ages 4 and 9, Jim at age 4,  and Eileen at age 5. Eileen and Dick still argue whether he pushed her off the gate at Via de la Paz or she fell off in her hurry to get to Mom and Dad who were returning from a trip to St. Louis. Barbara recalls that Jim at 4 years could really wield his cast as a weapon.

Dick had bad sprains from  baseball and basketball. Then during 9th grade, while playing quarterback during a Pop Warner football game in Compton (with neither parent in attendance), he got a transverse fracture of the proximal shaft of the left humerus. He spent 6 weeks in traction at St. John’s Hospital. Fr. Colosimo, Mike and I helped him keep up with his class assignments, taught him how to play bridge, and sat and watched the Olympics.

Then Jim started 9th grade at Loyola High School. He was a knowledgeable bicyclist having biked 200 miles for the badge needed for Eagle Scouting. On a Sunday morning while going down Chautauqua on his 10 speed bike en route to a charity bike-a-thon, he had a terrible accident. His right femur was broken (also his left index finger). The nerve in his left leg was almost severed. He was hospitalized at St. John’s after emergency care at Santa Monica hospital. Surgery was necessary to pin the bone and remove a blood clot. After several weeks he was released from St. John’s Hospital.  He used crutches, had therapy 3 x week and wore a brace for his nerve damaged drop foot. Thank  God with the prayers of friends, the nerve rejuvenated and Jim can walk naturally again.

About the same time my next-door neighbor, Norm Serra broke his leg skiing.  Then my daughter, Barbara, ended a skiing day at Heavenly Valley [ed: Kirkwood] near Lake Tahoe by falling and requiring surgery for a spiral leg fracture. Those full leg casts really were itchy, but a yard stick helped. The fun was trying to help her take a shower with the cast encased in a green plastic trash bag!

Now Joe was in 8th grade planning how to go to Loyola but skip the 9th grade injury jinx. His solution: Joe fell during an 8th grade basketball game and made his  move to St. John’s Hospital early. With a complicated fracture of the right radial bone, it was necessary to have surgery and cast it in a new style, right-angle cast. (An older lady in a similar cast, said she broke her arm falling out of her golf cart!)

My mother-in-law fell and broke a hip in 1952.  So from her walker she taught me how to bake my first Thanksgiving turkey. Another time she and Pop were at our Radcliffe house caring for the children when Grace fell over a rocking horse. We got home in time to call the ambulance. The children stood at the window crying, “Please don’t take our Nonna away!” Grace also broke her leg leaving Corpus Christi Church the evening of our 25th wedding anniversary party.

Mike, not to be outdone, tore his Achilles tendon while playing tennis and spent almost a week at St. John’s as a patient. All doctors should have to be a patient in a hospital as part of their medical training.

I spent a great deal of my time in the Orthopedist’s office (Dr. McGonigle usually.)