So I took Ken's suggestion and looked up orthopedic on etymonline.com. It looks as though orthopedics started as the correction of bones in children. Maybe for things like scoliosis.

orthopedic
1840, from Fr. orthopédique, coined by Fr. physician Nicholas Andry (1658-1742), from Gk. orthos "straight, correct" + paideia "rearing of children," from pais (gen. paidos) "child.".

More sort-of-bad news. Christina went to the doctor on Tuesday last week, and he said that things don't look as good as he hoped they would after 5 weeks of having a cast on. There are three things he looks for:

1. Alignment of the bones at the ankle
2. Splintering has improved
3. Bone density has increased

Unfortunately, Christina only passed the test for the first two. The doctor took off the cast and asked Christina to try and "shock" her foot into increasing bone density. Basically, he thinks since she wasn't using it, her body decided not to allocate resources to her ankle. So like the way you beat a tree to get it to be stronger, Christina is very gently putting weight on her foot at times throughout the day.

Her next appointment is in a week. Hopefully, everything will have improved. Since she doesn't have a cast, I suppose her alignment could get worse (it was "perfect" last week). If things don't look good enough, she'll have to have surgery late next week. Let's all hope that doesn't happen.