Advice for son with TWO broken wrists

[Theresa71]

My 12 year old was knocked off his bike on Saturday, and landed on his wrists, breaking both. He's now in two matching casts for six weeks. How are we going to manage? Advice for passing the time and minimising his suffering would be greatly appreciated.

He should start thinking up comebacks for when his mates at school start with the wisecracks about his love life being ruined, for a start. (Young lads do sympathy in its advanced 'mockery of the afflicted' form.)

My 7 year old did this and I was terrified but she quickly got used to the casts and was able to eat and pull up her own trousers after the loo, my suggestion would be DVDs lots of them, go to the cinema and board games although obviously my daughter was quite little compared to your son, it will go really quicklynmy daughter did it the first week of the summer holidays they are very resilient, also limbo cast covers so he can take baths and showers, I feel for you and for your son its awful to do both

Golly, poor chap. Of course there are some practical implications for him and you such- how does he go for a pee? (he'll probably have to sit for a while). He won't be able to wipe his own bottom, soap anything in the shower. Poor chap.

The only other kid I'd heard of doing this was a rather wayward 15 yo who went back to having to have his willy held by his mum while he peed. Considering he broke his wrists falling off the side of the house whilst trying to go out for the night after being grounded, that was kind of sweet.

But your poor DS was only cycling...

I guess lots of videos. Kindle? Can he operate any keys with his nose? Maybe he'll be able to do things with his fingers or thumbs in time? Can he see how far he gets trying to play the piano with his toes like that Chinese talent show contestant. Tricky one. I'll give it some thought.

I only have experience of 3 yr old DS with a broken leg and same DS a year later with one broken wrist but advice would be:

• Keep pain medication topped up VERY regularly to start with, even 20 mins delay meant DS was in pain and upset until the next lot kicked in. This meant first thing in the morning was hard as he hadn't taken anything for a while.
• Get two Limbos from [[http://www.limboproducts.co.uk here]. Makes life SO much easier though not a priority when everything hurts to start with.
• Relax any rules on TV, video, screen-watching
• Once things stop hurting he will work out lots of innovative ways of getting around/doing things, sometimes its best not to look (think 3 yr old in full leg cast coming downstairs )
• Look after yourself in amongst it all. It is surprisingly tough both emotionally and physically on YOU. Lots of , chocolate and

Good luck with it all

I'm having to help him in the toilet, not sure which of us it's worse for. Already starting to go through his DVDs again, I'm going to treat him to a few new ones. Got the cast covers coming in the post any day, so hopefully he'll be able to bathe himself after that. He can just about operate his phone using his left thumb, but at least he's off that infernal PS3 I should never have bought him...