Ouch!!!!

Who knew coaching Little League could be dangerous.  I sure didn’t think it was! But a few weeks ago I found out the hard way that it can be.  Due to a packed schedule for the entire league we had to relocate to a different field for our practice.  As we arrived at the new practice field I set the equipment down that I was carrying, turned around to tell the kids to start warming up and…BAM…my face was immediately met with a very hard baseball.  It was just one of those things; I turned and had zero time to react, so I ended up getting smashed right in the mouth with an errant throw.  The shot was enough to take my legs out from underneath me.  As soon as I was able to snap myself back into the here and now I ran a quick assessment of the situation…no loose or missing teeth, no pain in the nose, lots of pain in the upper lip but no hole so at least the teeth didn’t go through it.  But holy crap there was a lot of blood when I spit thanks to a large gash on the inside of my upper lip.  The cut was bad enough that I decided to make a quick run to the local ER just to get everything checked out, so I trudged back to my truck and off I went.  If you follow this blog then you must know that a hospital story is about to unfold.

First let me say that it was the fastest I have ever been in and out of an ER, it must have been a slow night.  I got out of there so fast that I was able to go back to the field and finish practice.  I’ll also add here that I didn’t get any stitches, just an antibiotic so that it didn’t get infected.

On to the story…

I walk into the ER and tell the front desk why my face looks like I just lost a boxing match and they send me over to the triage nurse. I once again explain what happened, and then the following conversation takes place:

Nurse: Do you have any medical conditions?

Me: Nope

Nurse: Do you take any medications?

Me: Yes…lots of ibuprofen and prescription pain meds as needed.

Nurse: Do you take those for migraines?

Me: No, I have Chiari Malformation and had brain surgery last year.

Nurse: Well then don’t you think that counts as a medical condition?!?!

Me: Ummm? Oh yeah I guess it does.

At this point in the conversation she had a look on her face that was part WTF is Chiari and part exacerbation.  She then asked what Chiari was and I explained it to her.  Even after I explained it to her she was still looking at me like I was making it up so I turned my head and pointed to my zipper.  From this point on the rest of the conversation was normal triage stuff followed by BP check, etc., although her tone of voice and cadence changed.

I know what you’re thinking.  How could you forget about your constant companion?  I think the answer is that for the first time in years a part of my body actually hurt more than my head.  I was actually thankful that my mouth hurt so much that my head was an afterthought.

So there you have it.  For the first time since I started this blog the hospital story highlighted my dopiness instead of theirs.  And that field we relocated to…well it has a new name…it’s now called the ‘field of blood”.  It’s not just because my face got smashed, the next time we practiced on that field one of our players got hit in the face with a ball and his nose started bleeding like crazy.  Then a ball took a bad hop and hit our first baseman (my son) right in the lower jaw, luckily it didn’t break, but it was nice and swollen for a few days.

I’m going to end this post with a question for not only other Chiarians but for anyone that has had brain surgery…When you’re dealing with medical professionals that aren’t involved in your brain issues and you tell them you have had brain surgery do you notice that they suddenly change the way they speak to you? I’ve noticed they always change their tone and cadence, suddenly they slow their speech down a tad and have a bit of that “oh you poor thing” tone in their voice.  Let me know in the comment section, I want to know if it’s just me that thinks this.