COTW: Orthopedics

By Jason

Many would agree that the first year of residency might be the steepest learning curve of the many years of medical training.  So many new terms, new responsibilities, new sights and smells. So much to read. My time so far at Kibuye is certainly rivaling my first year of residency.  One area in which I am having to learn a lot is in orthopedics.  I do not have a lot of experience in orthopedics, but I see a lot of it here, so my various ortho textbooks are open frequently, and many e-mails are sent to various orthopedic colleagues for advice.

Fiston is a 4 year old boy who broke his femur.  So I read about traction and spica casts and variations based on age.  Spica casts wouldn't really work here, so I decided to put Fiston in traction for 4 weeks and then took off the traction and mandated that he stay in bed for another week to let the fracture heal. So one day (during the week he was supposed to be on bed rest) I walked outside to find him like this:

His mother saw me and shouted to him to sit down, so he jumped down into the wheelchair.  Hopefully 4 weeks of traction was enough.  I guess you just can't keep some kids down.