Well, its been a couple of years, but our companay softball team had a season where completing a game without injury was considered a success more than winning. Among the team we counted several bumps and bruises as well as torn webbing (5 stitches) between the thumb and index finger. My injury that year was by far the most spectacular.
“Its a beautiful night for softball here in Fort Worth. There’s a deep fly ball to right center. Boxcar circles under it and this is going to be a quick out.”
That’s how things should have gone. I adjusted and set-up to make a routine catch.
Something distracted me. Lights, a yelling teammate, good looking blonde, I don’t know. Suffice to say, I lost the ball.
When I found it again, it seemed to be the size of a big pizza pie. I remember thinking “oh shit” and “this is gonna hurt.”
The impact, I am told, was spectacular. I was driven to my knees, my glasses absorbing the impact and then snapping and launching out in multiple directions; blood flying from my face. I found the ball on the ground, flipped it to the LCF (as I am nearsighted couldn’t see the cut-off man), and he made the throw in. But the squemish look on his face had registered with me as had the warm wet stuff running down my face.
I collected what was left of my glasses and moseyed towards the dugout cussing my performance. I was pissed. Not only had I screwed up an easy out, but I was going to have to skip work to get new glasses. As I didn’t have a back-up pair, it was likely Mrs Boxcar would need to take off as well to haul me around. Great, both of us missing work over this.
Called the Mrs who took me over to the ER. As we arrived, a technician came out to tell her she couldn’t park by the entrance but took one look at me, ordered me into a wheelchair, and hauled me into the ER. Its amazing how fast his shout of “We got a bleeder” got everybody’s attention. Everyone in the ER waiting area looked up. Men cried. Women fainted. Children screamed. I was hustled into a room. Finally, I thought, some help.
Wrong. Not a bandage or anything to replace the saturated paper napkin I held to my face. The next 10 minutes were taken up by insurance and hospital paperwork. I wasn’t dying, might as well make sure I can afford being sewn up prior to staunching the flow of blood.
They tried checking my vision. With my paper napkin on my face they parked me twenty feet away from an eye chart and asked me if I could read the chart or if it was blurry. “No more than usual, I don’t have any glasses on.” I finally moved up to where I could see clearly. From five feet everything was clear.
Back into a gurney to wait. I asked the nurse doing the prep work on me how many stitches I needed. Four, Five? “You haven’t seen this yet, have you?” Hmmm.
The doc finally comes in to start sewing me up. It took forever as the damage was in some delicate areas. The glasses had driven into my cheek, splitting it, snapped and the temple had rebounded into the eye area. The fact the glasses took the impact probably saved me some broken bones. No eyeball damage, fortunately. I laid there some 3 hours as the doctor would put in a stitch or two then go relax and come back and do two more.
Final tally, about 40 stitches in the cheek and around the eyeball with 4 in the corner of the eye area to put the edge of the eyelid back in place. A raccoon face from bruises that turned black, blue, yellow, red, green, and purple. I was a quite the sight for over a week as everything healed.
Two years later and the scar is barely visible. Damn. That takes all of the fun out of getting smacked in the face. What good is a scar that doesn’t call enough attention to itself for you to talk about it?
And I was driving toward the goal to create some interference and maybe get a rebound for my teammate with the Al MacInnis type slapshot. But when he shoots he manages to drill me in the leg right behind the knee, straight on, full force. That hurt! At first I was worried I might have really damaged a ligament, but I just ended up with a huge bruis all up and down the back of my leg. Our season just ended and we ended up one goal out of the playoffs, which sucks.