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Momservation: Why isn’t the healing of sick children in doctor’s office waiting rooms modern miracles?

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You would never guess my daughter, Whitney, broke her arm five weeks ago.

Beyond the moment after first walking up to me, not a tear in her eye, clutching an Icee in one hand and holding up her other to tell me she thought she just broke her arm, the girl hasn’t let the minor inconvenience of a broken appendage ruin her summer.

The most she cried was not when the pain of her break hit her, but when the novelty of getting a cast wore off (in the doctor’s office waiting to get it put on). She realized all the water time she would likely miss – Daddy’s big pool party on 4^th of July with all her friends, water skiing at Shaver Lake, splashing, jumping and diving with her friends at the pool, and the effective end to her swim team season (though she was okay with that one).

When the cast was put on, the doctor told Whitney due to increased uncoordination because of the body’s energy being weighted to one side to heal itself she should refrain from, “Running, jumping and pivoting.”

Well, let’s see. The very next day we dropped her off at soccer camp. Does protecting the goal with a broken arm, scoring countless goals, leading the charge in an obstacle course race, and wielding her cast as a club threatening cone raiders with “I’m not afraid to use this thing!” considered running, jumping or pivoting?

She certainly didn’t run, jump or pivot when she turned herself into a human submarine, holding her blue-bagged cast aloft out the water like a periscope, refusing to be left out of any water fun.

There might have been some running, jumping and pivoting when Whitney won Camper of the Week at Buzzardball basketball camp, but I was too busy noticing she was only one of two girls showing the boys she still “got game” even with a broken arm.

She rode her scooter in the 4^th of July parade and did three-legged and sack races, she bowled, she miniature golfed, she danced and she fished. All free of running, jumping, pivoting I’m sure.

The most impressive though was when we went to Shaver Lake. First we let her go tubing behind the ski boat if she sat in the middle of the three-person, seated inflatable. Before long she was on the edge (for best weight distribution) riding that raft like a bucking bronco, taunting the water and daring the boat driver to tip her over. Not a run, jump or pivot in sight.

Since that went so well, we let her water ski off a boom. With her blue bag offering debatable water protection for her cast if she fell, she once again showed that nothing stops an eight year old girl with a broken arm. She didn’t fall and she didn’t run, jump or pivot.

Since Whitney was getting her cast off in only a few days, and we determined that the worst thing to happen if the cast got wet was the smell (which was already so bad, how could it smell worse?), we gave into one last request to test the limits to running, jumping and pivoting.

Along with a dozen other kids on the camping trip, she wanted to jump off a 20 foot rock into the lake. With a shrug we tightened up the blue bag around the cast and sent her on a running jump with a delightful little pivot for style into the lake with her friends.

Amazingly, Whitney’s arm had become so strong holding it aloft away from water for nearly five weeks, she plunged into the lake, arm stretched to the sky, and bobbed to the surface like a cork without ever submerging her casted arm.

So we let her do it two more times.

Today, in about an hour, we go to get off this cast that threatened, yet failed, to slow Whitney’s summer down. We will celebrate the healing of her arm and return to being a normal kid by going to Raging Waters where she can get every inch of her body wet in slippery, crazy, fun.

Unfortunately, there’s no running, jumping or pivoting allowed around the pool decks.