church basketball - the bane of my existence

wednesday nights are usually my 'night off' - i get to go out with friends or wander the aisles of Wal-mart or scrapbook unhindered by little people. after dinner is made, eaten and cleaned up and the troops head upstairs to get ready for bed, my night begins! as i have mentioned before, i have a BIG problem with my television obsession ... wednesday nights are hard to miss! so the last few i've been having my 'night off' in front of the tv (sad, i know).


this last wednesday night i had settled in with my scrapbook and remote when andy came back from putting the kids to bed in his basketball clothes. (many of you know that thursday nights are 'game night' for church ball - but this week there were some meetings in the stake center and so the powers-that-be cancelled all games for this thursday.) he had decided that since he wouldn't be playing thursday night ... and i wasn't going anywhere, he'd take this opportunity to 'get in some cardio'.


he left at about 9:00 ... at about 9:45 i got a call from him, "i jammed my finger really bad - it really hurts. do you think i should go to a walk-in clinic?" "how bad is it? do you think you need to?" "i don't have my wallet - i'll be there in a minute."


when he walked in i could tell it was bad ... he was almost in tears - and he has a pretty high pain tolerance. he had gone up for a rebound and another guy's elbow came down on his ring finger ... he thought it was just jammed but when he pulled on his finger he said that it felt like the bones in his hand were moving. he could bend it right after but now it hurt too bad. almost as i watched it, his hand started to swell. we googled everett walk-in clinics and discovered that they all close at 8pm - the emergency room was the only option. he took his jacket and wallet and headed to providence everett.


at 10:45 the phone rang again. "hey what's your social security number? ... how do you spell dr. pautler? ... thomas? ... k - i'm all checked in ... now they'll see me."


but not right then - well, they took him to get an x-ray and then he was back in the waiting room for another 45 minutes. at about 11:30 a nurse came out and took him to a room where he waited for another LONG while ... at about 12:45 the doctor came in and woke him (he doesn't know if he was snoring or not - i bet he was...) and let him know that he was, in fact, broken but didn't need surgery. the nurse came back to put it in a brace and gave him a perscription for some pain pills.


when he arrived home i was already in bed half-asleep ... his hand was wrapped from finger tip to elbow. he could bearly pinch his thumb and pointer finger together. he told me what the dr. said and all i could think was 'he's going to have to get a cast and he's going to be zero help for the next 6 weeks ... i have SO much to do before we have company ... my list has 15 things on it - all require the use of hands ... more than just the left!! how am i ever going to get it all done and for that matter he can't change diapers, do dishes, put away the folded piles of clothes or rub my feet!' (forgive me: i didn't have enough presence of mind to take a picture of it.) he got ready for bed - left handed ... and came to bed. i kissed him goodnight, rolled over in my self-pity and cried myself to sleep. [nevermind what he was feeling - it was his RIGHT hand ... and he types for a living ... and he can't even wash his own armpit.]


the next morning he called for an appt. at everett bone and joint - the first available was friday at 4:15pm.


friday couldn't come soon enough, i picked the girls up from school and we headed to grandma shaw's house ... we left the 3 oldest there and took easton with us to his appt. i was andy's scribe and we filled out the necessary paperwork and then waited in our assigned room for the doc. he came in and took us back to look at the x-ray. it was a clean spiral break of the fourth metacarpal bone in his right hand.


the last time he broke a bone it was the fifth metacarpal bone of this same hand and he was an ASL missionary in NYC ... he was fed up with one of the 5 other elders he shared a studio apt. with (not his companion ...) and instead of punching him he took it out on the coffee table. his cast was knuckles to elbow for 6 weeks. he rode his bike and taught the gospel to the deaf with his left hand! when it was removed he asked to keep it - for sentimental reasons ... maybe he was thinking that his future children would want to see it, or that his future wife would want to scrapbook it, or that his posterity would want it for some gosh-awful-reason-i-can't-figure-out!!


anyway ... this most recent cast is much smaller (thank heaven! as well as modern medical knowledge and technology) and blue! he's supposed to go back in next friday for another x-ray to make sure it's healing properly and then we'll know for sure how long he'll be a lefty.

wish us luck!