Allen's Arm

A little over a month ago, Allen was invited to a birthday party. His best friend's little brother was having a birthday party at a local bounce house, and Allen was invited to keep his friend company. Allen and his best friend have both been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome (a high functioning form of Autism.) One of the symptoms of Asperger's is impulsivity. Most of the time, we see this symptom as simply not thinking before you act. On this particular day this particular symptom came back to get both these boys. Badly!!

Less than an hour into the two hour party we got a call from the mom of the birthday boy. Before the party we had arranged for her to take the boys to the party, and then bring Allen back when the party was done. When she called us she asked us if we wanted to come pick Allen up, or if we wanted her to bring him home. I was very confused. Hubby talked to her, and then relayed the message to me. The last thing she said before hanging up was, "It is really bad!" We started imagining all the different ways Allen could have acted up to get thrown out of the party that early. When she got to our house the first thing she said was, "Let's get him into your car, so we can get him to the hospital." It took several minutes for it all to sink in. Allen had dislocated his wrist, and it was now sitting on top of his forearm. Hubby took him to the hospital where they took some X-rays, and put him on an IV. He ended up having surgery, and had a couple of pins put into his wrist.

We actually were lucky enough to find this picture in some of my sister-in-law's pictures, and it helped us to visualize exactly what happened for this particular accident. Allen's friend came up with the bright idea to slide down the bumpers on the side of the slide, and then roll off halfway down, and land on the red supportive things on the side of the slide. Allen said that they both performed this stunt several times successfully. Then one time, Allen was not able to actually roll onto the red support, and instead rolled down the bumper to the blue things at the bottom of the slide where he landed on his wrist. His friend was terrified that we would never let them play together again. His mom actually had us stick our head into their van before we could leave for the hospital to let her son know that they would be able to play together in the future.

Here is a very drugged up Allen. (He has always had the best bed head!!) The first skill he learned was playing DS with only one hand. At first he propped it on his lap, and was able to play all the buttons (which normally takes two hands) with his one good hand. He then learned how to hook his pinkie under the DS to carry it around the house while playing it.

Another view of his impressive playing skills. He is pushing the buttons with his ring finger and controlling the stylus with his other fingers while holding the whole thing with his pinkie. It took him a week to be able to button his pants, but playing video games was mastered the first day.

Here is Allen with his cast. We get it off on Monday. I am amazed at how little it has slowed him down. This is the first broken bone in our family, and I was expecting it to be much more traumatic.

And of course, the signatures!