Had a little too much excitement the other night. Ruan and I were playing keep-the-frisbee-away from Busman (their dog) tonight after supper. I tossed one of my signature errant throws, the kind that curves away from the reciever as he tries to run it down, inevitably escaping his last desperate lunge by a fraction of a centimeter. (I do not throw this variety purposefully just for the record.) Anyhow, just at that last crucial second when player and disc try to connect, Ruan went down. It looked like a pretty hard fall, but nothing worse than the usual result of a last-ditch lay-out for the catch. But unlike usual, Ruan didn't bounce right back up. "Are you okay?" I called out as I hurried over. He didn't respond immediately and in that split second I knew something wasn't right. Earlier that evening I had stumbled in the same area where Ruan now lay sprawled, so I knew what was there.
"No, I'm not okay" he replied as he looked down. By this time I had reached his side and what I saw flipped one end of my stomach over the other, pulled it through the resulting loop, and cinched it down so hard I could hardly breathe. His left foot was impaled on a 3/8 inch shaft of re-rod like a hotdog on a roasting stick. The tip of the iron was pretruding at the back of his ankle and on the verge of breaking out right next to his achilles tendon.
"Fawna!" I hollared. "Come quick!" Ruan was soon surrounded by several concerned faces arguing about whether or not to extricate the offending rebar immediately or wait until we had something to use to slow the insuing gush of blood. By this time the initial shock had worn off and Ruan was in excruciating pain. Fawna arrived with a dressing and we extracted the rod as quickly and smoothely as possilbe. (I never would have thought that being derailed could be such a good thing. Didn't look any less painful though.) The next hour or so was crazy with a dozen or us running everywhere for a dozen different things. Hydrogen peroxide, charcoal, water, gauze...Ruan started to go into shock so I ran for a blanket. Praise God that Fawna wasn't gone! She's an RN and cleaned and stitched the wound. She was so calm and knew just what to do. Fortunately Ms. Susie had left some lydocane as well which was a HUGE blessing, as it brought some relief to poor Ruan, which in turn made the rest of us feel better too. As did the fact that the re-rod missed his ankle bone and achilles tendon by a mere fraction of an inch. God is good! So now we just have to keep administering charcoal and keep praying that the wound won't get infected.