About 10 weeks ago, I traveled with the Menke family to Steamboat Springs, Colorado on my first-ever ski trip. The first half-day we were in town, I listened to everyone’s advice and took a ski lesson.
At the same time, Tony decided to take a snowboarding lesson. (He’s been skiing for like 20+ years, but had never tried to snowboard.) As I was expecting, he was pretty much awesome. And he enjoyed the challenge. So he decided he’d snowboard the next day too and gain a little more experience before he went back to skiing the black slopes.
About an hour into our first full day on the mountain, Tony fell and broke his right wrist. In typical Tony bone-breaking fashion, he did it to the extreme – a broken bone, a wrist dislocation, surgery, a plate and seven screws. No more time on the slopes for him.
Since that time his poor arm has been in a variety of movement-limiting devices. Immediately after surgery it was in a quasi-cast with a wrap and sling. When we got back to Kansas and they were able to remove the staples, he progressed to a full arm cast that went from his armpit to down past his thumb. About a month later, he moved into the cast you see in the photo above – a much more reasonable half-arm cast that (finally) allowed elbow movement.
Today, Tony graduated from that cast into a brace. I’ve not seen it yet, but I’m pretty sure it’s fabulous. Well, okay, that may be over-selling it. But a brace can come off. And can be (somewhat) washed. And should allow for even a little more movement. And those things mean Tony’s going to able to start being more Tony-like again. And start to sleep better. And I like both of those things because I know he’ll be happier.
The injury wasn’t all bad though. It provided some experiences we wouldn’t have had otherwise, testing our relationship to see how well we could work together through adverse situations. (We did pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. I mean, we did survive the trip back from Colorado where I drove 9/10th of the way home. We won’t talk about that other 1/10th….)
I also got to help Tony out a lot in the kitchen and became much more comfortable (and somewhat handy, I think) with a knife and cutting board. Now I’m almost a pro at cleaning and cutting up sweet potatoes. If that wasn’t worth him breaking an arm, I don’t know what is… just kidding.