Natural Remedies for Broken Bones

Phew! It's been a rough month for Penelope medically.  Is that not the saddest picture you have ever seen?  Oh, to see her in a cast, broke my heart.

First, she broke her arm.  Then she got diagnosed with mucosa contagiousum and recently a fever that has lasted more than three days.  I want to share, in three different posts, what I have done to help treat each issue as naturally as possible and hopefully it helps some of you out there in similar situations.

So for her broken arm:

She had a Buckle fracture in her right radius.  I am not even sure exactly how she did got it. None of her falls seemed particularly disastrous, and she falls on a near daily basis. She does seem much more fearless than other toddlers, but her falls still seemed pretty normal to me. Although post arm break, she does fall less, not sure if its from me and Peter making sure we had some sort of hold on her for awhile, no matter where she walked to and constantly saying "watch your feet!" or if she was just going through a clumsy/daredevil stage.

Only when I reached out to grab her hand to put soap in it, and she let out a scream, did I realize something was wrong.  Then I noticed that her wrist was swollen.   I don't know how long it was broken before I realized it.  The Dr' seems to think that I caught it within a couple of days if not 24 hours based on the swolleness being a immediate inflammatory response.   He also said that kids get this type of fracture all the time from falling down and breaking their fall by falling forward on their arms.  He said it often goes undiagnosed and heals on its own.

Now I know to check her arms for swelling after she falls.  

Once I noticed the swelling, I immediately packed her in the car and went to the ER. Well, first I had to get gas.  I will never let my car go past a quarter tank again.  If it had been some sort of real emergency, I would have been up Shit Creek without a paddle.

We got x-rays and that was probably more traumatic then the fall itself.  They were forcing her arm to stay still in a position that was obviously painful for her, on top of her being terrified of the huge x-ray machine. Not to mention all the radiation she got from the three x-rays. I also was holding her and there was no way for me to wear the safety jacket thing, and keep her in the correct position, so that sucked too.

She got a  temporary cast and we went to the orthopedic dr. a few days later and she got a real cast with a ace bandage for the top cover instead of another layer of cast, so I could remove it for bathing (and for once daily playing in the sand box, shhhhhh).

 She kept the cast on for three weeks.  Then when she took it off I was instructed to just watch how she was with her arm, if she was using it like normal and putting weight on it.  It seems to have healed perfectly.

We didn't do a follow up x-ray, her ortho dr. said that it wasn't needed.  Thank God.  Between her broken arm and her Atlas vertebre issues she had as a newborn, she has had a total of 5 x-rays.  Their is a debate whether radiation in your body is cumulative and it never goes away or if you can eliminate through various natural dexox methods. Either way it sucks it was in her little body at all.  Can you imagine if we lived in Japan?  Sigh.


Anyway, here the natural rememdies I used to aid the bone healing process:

• upped her Vitamin D.  I gave her a Solaray chewable Vitamin D, in a lemon flavor of 2000 IU every day.  I have continued to do this.  I have no idea if this is the "correct" amount for a 16 month old, but it felt right in my gut.  
• upped her Vitamin C.  Hyland's makes a dissolvable tablet.  I give her this once a day if I remember.
• I juiced her spinach and pinapple every day for about a week.  Usually, I juice every three or four days, but I wanted to make sure she had plenty of perfect, fresh juice and so did I (so she would get in through breast milk). Spinach and other greens are natural chelators.  They bind to anything bad in our bodies and help flush them out.  They are also full of B vitamins which help restore cells. It will help her body detox the radiation and the Tylenol I gave her the first couple of days for her pain.  Pinapple has something in called bromelian in it, that reduces swelling and inflammation.  
• I rubbed an arnica cream on her arm every time I took the cast off. Later, I found out this is not enough arnica, and the tablets are needed in a case like this.
• I went to a homeopathic Dr. in town and was given a vile of Arnica, Rutta, and Calcarea Phosphorica.  He told me to give her arnica until the swelling was gone and then give rutta, and then the Cal/Phos.  
• He said that the arnica would help with the pain and I didn't need to give her Tylenol anymore.  I also gave her some Camomilla to help with the pain as well.

Here is a site that I got some of my information from.

My first thought when Penelope broke her arm is that she had some sort of calcium deficiency and her bones were weak.  I still have not gotten her calcium levels checked, because the Acupuncture Dr. I talked to about it, said that if we tested her while her arm was healing her levels would be off since her body is pulling more calcium to the bone to heal it.

When I was talking to the homeopathic Dr. he told me that Cal/phos is great for all over bone growth and spine development, for hair and nail growth and helps with teething.


Apparently, if you are calcium deficient your teeth can come in slow.

So I might be on to something, Penelope's hasn't gotten any new teeth in a long time and her molars have been huge and swollen but not pushing through for months and months. Now that her cast is off and her arm is healed we have an appointment to check her levels. I will come back and let you know what we found.

If you know of any other remedies, please share and I will add them for future reference.  Hope this helps!