After a lifetime of riding horses and no broken bones, Carol Ann Tally can now say she’s had her fair share of emergency room visits — with her children.
“The joke is that when the Tally kids do anything, they do it all the way,” she said.
Carol Ann’s first trip to the Cape Fear Valley Health’s Pediatric Emergency Department was in October 2022.
She was watching her boys play in the backyard when her oldest son Locke, then 5, fell from a piece of playground equipment.
“He was just playing on the side and it wasn’t even four feet, but he came down right on his ankle, it started swelling immediately,” Carol Ann said.
She started the protocol of elevating, icing, and giving him Tylenol while also texting one of her closest friends, Nisha Patel, a local physician assistant at Cape Fear Valley Health with emergency department experience and three children of her own.
“Nisha came right over and said from the way it was swollen, that I needed to get him to the hospital,” Carol Ann recalls. “My husband Lockett was out of the country so she stayed with my other children while I took him over.”
At age 38, she found herself going into the ER for the first time carrying her son on her shoulders piggyback-style through the metal detectors.
“The staff confirmed the break and also said because it was across a growth plate, he would need surgery,” Carol Ann said.
Sometimes children who have growth plate fractures heal with no complications, but other factors — such as age, and severity and location of the injury — can “increase the risk of crooked, accelerated or stunted bone growth,” requiring surgery, according to the Mayo Clinic.
That was when she was first introduced to Dr. Dan McBrayer, an orthopedic surgeon with Fayetteville Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine.
Dr. McBrayer, who currently also serves as the chief of orthopedics at Cape Fear Valley Health, said that children are amazing with how they heal, especially with common fractures.
“Kids … heal entirely differently than adults,” Dr. McBrayer said, adding that children do not always need physical therapy and heal faster because they are often smaller and more flexible.
Dr. McBrayer joined Fayetteville Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine in 2008 after a sports medicine and arthroscopy fellowship at Hughston Orthopaedic Clinic in Columbus, Georgia, and his residency at Duke University. He has worked with all ages of athletes throughout his years, particularly at the high school and collegiate levels.
“Most of the time when we see injuries, it’s non-operative and we can get a patient better with physical therapy and maybe medication,” Dr. McBrayer said. “But when the situation arises where they need surgical intervention, that’s what we do.”
She said it was Dr. McBrayer’s reassurance and professionalism that gave her complete peace of mind as Locke prepared for surgery the following morning.
“One of my favorite things about Dr. McBrayer is how he turned to me and said, ‘If this was my child, I would do this,’ and told me what was needed,” Carol Ann said. “As a parent, that was all I wanted to hear.”
“He assured me that it was going to be OK,” she said.
Locke came out of surgery needing a cast and a wheelchair, which he got both in the color orange for October and Halloween. She said the staff at Alma Easom Elementary School, where Locke attended, worked to accommodate his wheelchair, doing everything they could to make him comfortable.
“Our house was under renovation, too, during this time so we just made it all work,” Carol Ann said. “After the cast came off in November and the wheelchair was not needed later that month, he had weekly physical therapy until January.”
She said his ankle had healed but his confidence level was not there yet, making him apprehensive about taking those first few steps.
“He refused to walk,” Carol Ann laughed. “He just said he wasn’t going to walk again and that was it. It was all very dramatic for Locke at age 5.”
Dr. McBrayer agreed with a chuckle that Locke was “thoughtful” and needed extra time to recover, so he prescribed physical therapy for a couple of months to help get him back on his feet. The extra time helped him process his recovery.
Last May, Dr. McBrayer removed a screw from Locke’s ankle, and Carol Ann breathed easy until, once again, October played a trick on the family.
In 2023, exactly 364 days after Locke broke his ankle, the family’s second child, Hudson, had his own turn.
“He was at school, the day after his 5th birthday and fell going down the slide,” Carol Ann said. “I got the call and knew as soon as I saw the swelling that he needed to be looked at more seriously.”
Sure enough, Hudson broke his left elbow across his growth plate, necessitating surgery.
Dr. McBrayer’s office set it in a splint that same day and told her to wait the weekend to see whether it would shift.
When it did not shift back into place naturally, Dr. McBrayer operated on Oct. 20 and set his arm in a first cast six days later. Afterward on Nov. 16, Dr. McBrayer removed pins, which had been placed to help set the growth plate, then set in another cast. Hudson was finally given the all-clear on Jan. 4 this year.
“He was playing tennis two weeks later and has been playing every week since,” Carol Ann said.
Today, Locke and Hudson barely, and incorrectly, recall their young childhood memories: Locke, now 7, thought he injured his arm, while Hudson, 5, believed he hurt his hand.
As a mom with active children in sports, Carol Ann remembers everything; she said she might invest in bubble wrap in the near future.
Of course, Carol Ann knows where she can find help when she needs it with Dr. McBrayer and his team at Fayetteville Orthopaedics.
Fayetteville Orthopaedics has been providing quality care to the members of the Fayetteville community for more than 50 years and joined Cape Fear Valley Health in the spring of 2023. W. Dickson Schaefer, MD; Christopher J. Barnes, MD; Deren Bagsby, MD; Michael Dilello, PA; and Jeb Cleveland, PA, work with Dr. McBrayer daily to provide orthopedic services, joint replacement surgeries and treatment for sports-related injuries.
“I really can’t say enough about every doctor and our experience with Cape Fear Valley,” Carol Ann said. “I was impressed with how kind and thorough everyone was across the board. I wasn’t just a mom bringing in a kid with a little hurt ankle. They gave us every bit of concern and respect while giving us the best care.”
Valley Orthopedics & Sports Medicine is another clinic in the Cape Fear Valley System, and one that Fayetteville Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine works closely with since both clinics have similar specialties.
“We are essentially one group with two locations and we work well together,” Dr. McBrayer said. “I’ll refer to Dr. [Benjamin] Levine for wrist and hand issues, and, likewise, he will do the same for me with shoulders, knees, and hip surgeries.”
Fayetteville Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine, including the physical therapy suite, is located at 1991 Fordham Drive, Fayetteville. They are open 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays. They can be reached at 910-484-3114.
Valley Orthopedics & Sports Medicine is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (closed noon to 1 p.m.) Monday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to noon Fridays, and is located at 1219 Walter Reed Road, Fayetteville. Valley Orthopedics & Sports Medicine can be reached at 910-615-3350.
For more information on both offices, visit capefearvalley.com/ortho/.
