Nursemaids Elbow

Quick update on Anna's elbow. Many of you know her left arm has been dislocated quite a few times, the doctors call it nursemaid's elbow. Nursemaid's elbow is a partial dislocation of the elbow, which occurs when the lower part of the arm (forearm) slips out of its normal position at the elbow joint. The injury is also called radial head dislocation, see picture below.

When this happens she immediately starts crying and her arm goes limp. The only way to fix the dislocation is to manually put it back in place. Since it has happened so frequently her doctors showed us how to put it back in place (which she will only let Daddy do). She had her first incident at 10 months old, we thought she broke her arm, but after a trip to the ER, x-rays and exam they didn't know what it was? We took her to her pediatrician the next day and she discovered the nursemaid's elbow, put it back in place and within a minute she was using her arm again. Her doctors told us the more frequent it happens the easier it is to happen again and that she should grow out of it. It has happened 5 times in the last 7 months (more frequency) and it seems it takes less "pressure" to dislocate, so we decided to take her to her pediatrician to check her out again. We took her a week or so ago and found out she is practically "double-jointed" which basically means she is very flexible. This could also be the cause of her elbow problems, they don't really know. Her pediatrician recommended we take her to see a pediatric orthopedic doctor for an evaluation (in rare cases they can do surgery) but he thought she probably wouldn't have the problem again. I called and made the appointment, the earliest was May 6th, and I'm glad I did because it happened again Saturday night! We are concerned because we have to warn everyone about her elbow and watch carefully when she plays with other kids or adults! Hopefully we'll see him and he'll say there is no lasting damage and they will simply have a baseline in case she has problems later. We'll let you know how her appointment goes. . .