Wired Tight

I don’t think I’ve shared this yet but I’m a big zero in the pain threshold department. I've been limping around the house all evening, complaining about my sore feet following a couple of hours in heels this evening at a function. (What a baby!)

I asked for a spinal block at the first quiver of childbirth. The nurse asked me if I was “in labor?” I replied, “No…and I don’t plan to be.”

I’ll fuss over a hangnail for hours. Every purse, every piece of luggage has an antibacterial/pain relieving ointment tube strategically stashed away for emergencies. I’m like Elaine in the Seinfeld episodes where she’s sure there some secret message for all the doctors stuck in her medical file. My note would read “big baby.”

Subsequently, I am very impressed with tough people: people who live with chronic pain, who finish marathons with every muscle aching….women that give birth naturally! I wrote a few weeks ago about my new hero in the tough guy department, my nephew Blake Henry.

Blake was at high school baseball practice a month or so ago, when he and a fellow teammate collided while both attempted to catch a fly ball. Blake is pretty tall and the other kid was a bit shorter, so when they both smacked into each other the top of the other kid’s head slammed into the bottom of Blake’s jaw.

It was pretty obvious that both boys were hurt, but nobody was going to quit practice that afternoon. When Blake left the field he wasn’t feeling any better and the front of his shirt was red with his own blood.

The ER was busy and there was no way to tell how bad his injuries were, so he waited for a while before he was seen. A couple of x-rays later it was clear that Blake’s jaw was broke in two places!

This kid finished practice with his face in pieces. He never asked to come out. That’s tough.

In the very early morning hours of the next day he underwent surgery to repair the breaks. For the next three to four weeks he’ll have to function with his teeth wired shut and screws in his jaws. Here’s the kicker: all of this on very little pain medication. It was too big of a risk that he might become ill on the medication and be in further danger with everything wired closed.

Blake was the first family member to take to me when I began attending family events. He was just barely walking and would wobble over to me, turn around and then slowly back up so he could sit on my lap. We were buddies from that first afternoon.

When I visited him in the hospital following surgery it was with arms full of every car and sports magazine available in the gift shop. I told him how he was the toughest person his Uncle Alan or I knew.

He ended up only have his jaws wired for a couple of weeks.

He's so active and his metabolism is revved so high that he needed to eat - real food...not just protein drinks. He was dropping weight too fast and needed more nourishment.

I'm thinking about Blake and his pain threshold as a nurse a paper cut and pad around in house slippers. At least some of the folks are tough in this family!