Cloudy with a chance of stitches.

 Writing about the kids injuries is starting to feel a little like a weather forecast.

"And tonight we have a 60% chance of concussion with expected stitches and hematoma..."

Landon had major repair work done on his shoulder in January.  This is the SIXTH injury requiring general anesthesia surgery to repair damage.  We are not even counting stitches and broken bones anymore.  Its just painful.

Truthfully this last surgery really does take the cake in the painful department.  Right up there with Benson's first broken collar bone.

Landon hurt his shoulder the first time playing rugby last spring (but he made a game saving tackle in the last minute of the game so it's all worth it right...?) and he finished it off in football.  Everyone (doctors, trainers and coaches alike) all kept telling us that if he didn't have a documented dislocation then he was probably fine.  We knew he wasn't fine.  Any time an injury makes Landon scream with pain we can bet the bank that it is an injury not just a hurt. He had one game where his shoulder 'popped' SEVAN  times.  But we did four months of physical therapy to assuage all the health care providers' worries that we were jumping into surgery prematurely.  Finally the physical therapist threw in the towel and declared that Landon needed to see a surgeon.

It turned out that Landon had a massive bankart tear.  Landon's tear went from the front portion of the shoulder all the way around to the back.  Posterior and Anterior.  They put in six pins to anchor the labrum back up to the shoulder socket.  Ouch.

The shoulder is in a big stabilizing brace and Landon isn't allowed to even ride an exercise bike.  He has been sleeping sitting up in a recliner for six weeks. The first few days were especially difficult.  General anesthesia makes Landon throw up for a while.  Nausea is the worst.  

He is over the worst now and just has to start physical therapy and get things healed well enough to go in and have the right shoulder repaired...the right shoulder is as bad or worse than the left.  Sigh.  

Landon was ranked number one in the state for wrestling.  He really finished off his right shoulder in one of the two matches he wrestled this year.  He won the matches but had to stop three times (screaming involuntarily) to have his shoulder put back in place.  (his right shoulder--the 'good' one...) I was mad.  Why does he continue when it hurts so much? He says, "nobody told me I had to come out..." 

sheesh.  

So with Landon out, Dallin moved up to wrestle 195 instead of 182.  It's hard for Dallin to maintain 182.  Dallin was doing great (also ranked #1 in the state!) until a big meet at Minico.  He smashed his head into the mat and got a major concussion.  Great. He was stunned and lost the match but nobody recognized the concussion symptoms (he kept falling asleep and felt like he was walking around in a fog) so he went on and wrestled through the consolation bracket and won his next five matches.  But it came at a heavy price.  He came home confused, exhausted (way beyond the normal...) and grumpy with a terrible headache and tunnel vision.  

Concussions are a big pain.  The only treatment is to not think. 

They take concussion treatment very, very seriously around here.  He wasn't allowed to go to school at all--no bright lights, video games, texting or exciting movies or books.  He had to go check in with the trainer every day.  There is a specific protocol that has to be followed to return to learn and then return to play.  You can't move up to the next step until you are symptom free.  If symptoms return with increased activity then you have to go back a step. 

He sat at home like a mushroom for two weeks and he would still get really dizzy and get tunnel vision when he tried to reengage in life.  They say that recovery can be longer in kids with ADHD brains...

Rustin gave him a blessing and he started to improve a bit.  He was able to get back to classes but he would have to leave some of the more mentally stressful classes and go to the library.  He also didn't attend band, Body development or Jive practice. 

Anyway, he finally got back to wrestling--we pushed the recovery schedule a bit to have him wrestle in district wrestling.  It turned out that the intense noise, lights and wrestling were too much and we had to pull him out of the meet.  He was bitterly disappointed but I think also relieved. It surprised me how disappointed I was to have him miss state this year! But it is the right thing to do.   Now if we can just keep him out of Rugby long enough to heal.