“X” is for x-ray

She’s already seen a xylophone, so Lucy figured it was time for x-rays.

Last week, Lucy had one of those quirky injuries — doing something she does a hundred times a week (jumping from off a step from her bedroom into our back-porch “fun room”), she hurt her big toe. She didn’t complain about it right away, but it kept bothering her more, to the point she wasn’t walking on that foot and commenting about how much it hurt pretty constantly.

So the next morning, we figured we’d get a professional opinion. The office of our fabulous pediatrician has daily walk-in hours first-thing in the morning, so we all trekked to Skokie for the straight scoop. The doctor on duty waffled a little about whether to do an x-ray, but in the end told us that the risk of a toe-bone’s getting infected (just under the nail bed) is high enough that he wanted to rule out a break.

So here you have the evidence. Lucy was pretty sober about all the big hardware in the radiology department, but she was brave. And since she has had her picture taken so many times, it seemed reassuring that this was just a special kind of camera.

No break — just a bruise that needed some “buddy” taping of her big toe to the next. It took several days to improve, but she was tearing all around at full speed soon enough. (We’re actually back to taping it again this weekend, because she bumped it again and complained of some pain; but we trust she’s on the mend.)

Aren’t those bones in the foot amazing? (And somewhere along the line, probably shortly after the Biology 101 exam, I had forgotten that there are counter-intuitively only two bones in the big toe but three in all the others.) We’re glad she’s OK, but fascinated to have had this peek inside.