DailySusan Humor Blog

A MINNESOTA UFF DA

(H)e that hasteth with his feet sinneth.
-- Proverbs 19:2b

Last weekend, we went to the Twin Cities for our daughter’s softball tournament, and had to miss the University of Nebraska’s College World Series opener in Omaha.

Oy!

The “oy” turned into an “uff da” in a hurry – which is what I was in too much of.

See, we also visited friends who recently moved up there to a southwest suburb, Chanhassen, which, prophetically, is Indian for “sap.”

Their TV was downstairs. We put on the baseball game. I was upstairs when I heard the crowd roar. We must’ve scored!!! I scrambled downstairs to catch the replay, exulting:

WOOOO!!!

But my slick sandals, to the carpeted stairs, were like well-waxed skis to the slopes.

I did a soaring open pike into a full layout with an inward twist.

Artful, actually. But I didn’t get enough height on my dive, nor enough water under it. My heroically-proportioned corpus came down hard on my right ribcage:

WHAAAM!!!

My friend found me, speechless for once.

I sprawled flat the rest of the game, depleting my cell-phone battery with updates to my beloved, who was ‘way north of town with the softball team, TV-less. I mentioned my indoor dive in my final report about the Husker win.

“You might’ve bruised your ribs,” he muttered. “Better go have an x-ray.”

But this was the first sleepover for Maddy, 5, with her best friend Cissa and sister Sofia. You don’t haul kids to the E.R. at 10 p.m.

So I left her, and drove myself to the hospital in Waconia, 15 miles away.

They were astounded I hadn’t been rushed in by ambulance. It seems my right lung had been punctured by ribs fractured by my indoor dive.

On the x-ray, my lung looked like a balloon that had been run over and stomped upon. I must admit it was an ego boost to have all those handsome doctors looking at pictures of my chest and saying, “Wow!”

But once I knew what I had, the pain magnified. An old coot in the next enclosure was begging for “opium.”

I entreated the nurse: “I’ll have what HE’S having.”

Meanwhile, my husband got the motel manager to drive him the 45 miles to Waconia. He arrived just after they’d shoved a tube through my ribs into my lung to pump me back up, and the narcotics – not “opium,” but close – made me lose my Pizzaioli pizza and Izzy’s ice cream, repeatedly and with gusto.

Meanwhile, Maddy’s first sleepover was a holocaust. She kept popping up and declaring: “This isn’t going to work.”

Eventually, though, it did. And I saw once again that, whenever you fall, the grace you’re given while you’re lifted back up makes it well worth the pain.

Though I was hospitalized through Monday, my husband had a happy Father’s Day after all: he got to go on the log ride with Maddy at Camp Snoopy 4,000 times.

The doctors and nurses were all named “Larson,” “Olson” and “Hanson.” They treated me like a Valkyrie queen. The discharge orders said no cooking or cleaning for six weeks. Was this Waconia, or Valhalla?

Our friends brought me pink, fragrant, Paul Bunyan-size peonies, and tactfully stenciled “No Diving” on their stairway wall.

My mom was relieved to learn I had on brand-spankin’ new underwear.

Though I now know where every bump in the road is, back to Omaha, and the Huskers eventually lost despite my supreme zeal, my “Mother’s Little Helper” pills helped me not care.

Friends brought in dinners, I found a comfortable position to sleep – on my left earlobe – and the doctor says I’ll be pain-free in a month, as a long as I don’t talk, sing, sneeze, hiccup, have gas or breathe.

The doctor’s name: Olson . . . same as the motel manager who drove 90 miles round trip to bring my husband to the E.R. to say those three little words: “Nice going, Klutz.”

A Minnesota vacation: it takes your breath away.

Of course I’ll be back: in orthopedic shoes with rock-climbing cleats, a life preserver, helmet, choke collar, and a new tattoo: “Haste Makes Waste . . . You Dumb Chanhassen.”

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Prayer request: The accident made me so grateful, Lord, that it wasn’t worse, and that I have good overall health so that I can heal fast. It was a unique chance to witness Your stupendous artistry in the way You made our bodies, since my lung healed itself almost immediately. It’s humbling to recognize that the pain I’m feeling now is nothing next to the pain another softball mom is feeling, in the murder of her 16-year-old daughter, Sarah Neal, this past week in Omaha. The recovery road ahead of me is short, Lord, but theirs is for a lifetime. We pray a mantle of protection, strength and peace over each of them. And Lord? I’m determined to live life by Your timing from now on, and not always be in such a rush! (Deuteronomy 31:6)