When I was sixteen, I played volleyball, handball, soccer and basketball. As someone who played a lot of sports, I went for many years without a major injury. Then one fateful day in Grade 11, I was on the starting lineup on my basketball team for Kelly Road Secondary (go Runners) and a teammate stole the ball from the opposing team (D.P. Todd) and I ran for a breakaway.
My teammate threw me the ball for my layup but the pass went behind me so I had to twist my body, then the ball to get into position for the layup. If it had been a normal day, I would have either made the layup or not and that would be the end of the story. However, the gym at D.P. Todd Secondary used to have cement floors with no give and my improper positioning caused all of my weight to fall on my (poor) left knee. I felt a crunch and a pop and my knee slide sideways, snapping my ACL ligament in half.
I managed to last sixteen years of my life without a major injury. I had never broken a bone, had stitches or been hospitalized for anything in my life up until this point. Truthfully, besides having my babies, I haven't been hospitalized for anything since I was sixteen.
Then I had children.
Our son is almost three years old and he is exceptionally busy and can get into the most alarmingly strange and dangerous situations in the blink of an eye despite our best efforts at child-proofing. To date, we have been in the hospital with our son with a chipped tooth, forehead stitches, a weird rash from the MMR vaccine, scary falls and the latest, a sewing needle embedded in his right knee.
I am so very grateful that the doctors, surgeons, nurses and support staff at our hospital are so wonderful and caring. We were an exceptionally frantic family arriving at the emergency ward with a very frightened little boy and everyone was extraordinary. We were admitted quickly and transferred to minor treatment for assessment and x-rays when it was discovered that the sewing needle was embedded in the joint of his knee and would require surgery to remove it.
I went sixteen years before knee surgery and my son didn't even get to three years. Luckily, he was able to have surgery that evening and is recovering nicely at home.
All of this excitement was a mere four days after a preventative hospital visit with our daughter who tried to choke on something that she found in her travels on the floor. My daughter, who is only eight months old, is shaping up to be just as scary as her brother.
I want to thank all of the staff at UHNBC for being awesome. Everyone played with our son and tried to make the scary hospital a little less terrifying. Another patient who was waiting for treatment gave my son a toy to play with and it's now one of his favourites. My husband and I will be forever grateful that the people in this city are so generous and kind to our accident-prone family.
A thousand "thank-yous".
