A Coaching Injury

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this here before, but my husband recently started coaching middle school flag football. He’s loving it and we are too.

A few afternoons a week, I pick up the Mini Athlete from preschool and we head over to watch Daddy coach.

I think the Mini Athlete is picking up a few pointers.

On Wednesday, my husband had practice but, for some strange reason, I didn’t go. Instead, I got a frantic phone call from one of the moms at practice.

“Callie, Nate is hurt. Come to the field. He needs to go to the ER.”

My heart stopped. He’s the coach! How could he be hurt?

She told me he thought he had broken his collarbone.

I hightailed it to the field and saw him crouched over in pain on the bleachers. Turns out, he had been out on the field with the guys (as he usually is) and decided to play defense. One of his kids went running by and Nate ran after him, lunged for his flag, and landed awkwardly on his shoulder.

As soon as he tried to stand up, he knew something was wrong.

We headed to the ER, calling my mom in the process, asking her to meet us there to pick up the Mini Athlete. She got there before we did. Amazing.

We checked into the ER and waited…and waited…

And took photos for all of you. See that bump on his shoulder? It didn’t used to be there.

Ouch.

They finally brought him back for xrays and we found out that his collarbone is not broken, but he has an AC Separation – a “separated shoulder”. Not to be confused with a dislocated shoulder. There’s no popping this back into place.

Source

See where that red arrow is pointing? That’s the joint that comes apart when someone gets a “separated shoulder”. Ouch.

We’re heading to the orthopedic surgeon this morning to make sure no further treatment or surgery is needed. He’s still in a lot of pain, and has created a nice little pillow fortress for himself on the couch. But the pain didn’t stop him from coaching his team to victory yesterday!

Please pray for a speedy recovery!

The most ironic thing about this whole situation? Some of you might remember that when I was 28 weeks pregnant with the Mini Athlete, my husband had shoulder surgery to repair a torn labrum. That was the other shoulder. Now I’m 30 weeks pregnant and his other shoulder is out of commission.

He told me we can’t have any more kids – he doesn’t have any more shoulders.