Old Man Shove Injury Report

Just like her dad...

When your 31 year old husband tells you that he's going to play flag football and your gut says "NOOOOO! Don't let him do it!," your heart will coerce you instead to smile and say out loud, "Yes dear!" (I know this to be true because it recently happened to me.) Can you tell by the picture which part of the body is ALWAYS right? :)

When Ryan told me that he'd love to play flag football on Saturday (one of his favorite yet rarely indulged pastimes), I knew that something bad was going to happen. Call it intuition, call it reason (being 31 + sports + not realizing you're 31 = bad), call it what you will, but since I'd been feeling like a bad wife lately, my guilt won out and I held my tongue. The guy works SO hard, and it seems like lately I've been asking a lot of him in his precious spare time. When he asked if I minded him playing a game or two, I just couldn't crush his dreams. The fact that there was a group of guys he knew already playing AND the fact that Ryan was actually available to play seemed a bit like fate. (Too bad it turned out to be fate tempting Ryan...)  So despite that nagging voice in my head telling me to make him stay home, I smiled and waved him off, my final words being, "Just don't get hurt."

Those words do seem a bit foreboding if you don't know Ryan's history. In 2007, in a very similar situation, Ryan played a game of flag football in which he dislocated his shoulder. (Two complete coincidences since Ryan really is an athletic guy.) An ER visit, a shot in the butt (never understood that one...), and a month in a shoulder sling later, and I thought that Ryan had learned his lesson. I mean, we're getting old. But Ryan will always be young at heart (which I love about him) and may never accept that one's heart and one's body can most definitely be different ages. Bad wife for not reminding him of that on Saturday!

Maybe a whopping TEN MINUTES into his game, his achilles tendon snaps. I mean, SNAPS. Gone. Bye bye. So long, pal. No one hit him or caused the injury; it just happened. He was catching a punt return and when he planted his foot it just gave out. Thankfully it was his left leg so that he could drive himself back home to the ER--again--where the doctor told him that his tendon had completely ruptured. They sent him home in crutches with instructions to schedule surgery. (Talk about a long 48 hours while he waited to see the surgeon today!)

Ryan's super tough and has been feeling okay thus far. Honestly I think his inability to be 100% self-sufficient feels worse to him than his leg. Also, I'm a terrible caretaker (clearly NOT my calling in life), so that isn't helping his cause, which gets even more discouraging because Ryan is a GREAT caretaker when I'm sick. (Hey, I have other strengths in life...) Basically he just crutched around over the weekend, took some anti-inflammatories at night and waited for Monday to come.

By the grace of God Ryan was able to see his #1 choice in doctors this afternoon, and now has surgery scheduled right after Christmas. Thankfully the surgeon said that if the break was clean (and the tendon isn't shredded) that there's a chance he could be bearing weight on it as soon as ten days after the procedure. (Prayers, anyone?) Otherwise he'll just need crutches to be mobile. (Ryan's been joking about how awesome would it be if we rented a Rascal. Ha! Talk about Old Man Shove!) They gave him a boot so that he's able to walk around, and he feels in much better spirits.

E.V. and I couldn't go to his appointment with him, so when he got home, we wanted to cheer him up. So we decided that Emma Vance should be just like her dad with a boo boo on her foot. (Hey, it got a smile out of him!) They do say that laughter is the best medicine, right? If that's true, may I now introduce Dr. Emma Vance Shove. :)