The good, the bad, and the ugly

It's a good thing I changed the name of the blog to Never a Dull Moment because that describes our life to a T!!! :) Now for the title of the post, THE GOOD...Joe is going to be okay.
Now for THE BAD on Monday night Joe was playing a softball game with his squadron. About halfway through the game Joe was on second and the ball got hit out to center field. Joe made it to third and was headed home the catcher was on home plate (he should've been in front of it) I saw Joe running as fast as he could and the thought ran through my mind he better be careful or he was going to collide with the catcher. From my view Joe got to home plate and then there were people kind of gathering and my friend told me I should go over to where Joe was he was hurt -she was sitting right next to me I have no idea how she knew/saw that it was him, so I started walking toward the dugout and he was walking towards me I could see that his face was red and that his eyes were pouring water and he looked a little dazed, my first assumption was that he got poked in the eye. When he got to me I could see that his face was concave on the side a bit. Mione -my friend saw it at the same time and said "that's not good take him to the ER- just go!" about then Joe's nose started to bleed I still wasn't sure where/how he had been hit but we took off. Haylee was there so I ran to her and told her to stay with Mione. As we walked to the truck the pain started to hit Joe and he was freaking out a bit just cussing a lot and moaning -that freaked me out! I am always the spaz and he is so calm no matter what so that was scary. We rushed to the ER -it's only a mile away thank goodness- I pulled right up to the doors (I have never done that before) and jumped out got him out and inside filled out paperwork as quick as I could my hands were shaking so bad, I just kept telling them over and over that he was in severe pain and they needed to hurry. On the drive over I asked what happened and he said he was hit with the ball, basically the ball was thrown from center field it came in so fast -the guys who were standing right there said it sounded like a ball hitting a mitt when a major leauge pitcher throws it to the catcher. A loud smack! They got Joe right back in a room and within 15 minutes or so a doc had looked at him and they were giving him IV pain meds. Things calmed down then, I have never in my life seen ANYONE in that much pain. It was horrible. They did a CAT scan of his face and called the oral maxillofacial surgeon to evaluate him and decide if they needed to do surgery right away. Basically all the bones in the left side of Joe's face are broken/fractured. His brow bone is fractured, his orbital bone is fractured, and his cheek bone is broken - that is why there is an indentation in his face, and his sinuses are also out of whack. After the evaluation from the oral surgeon he said no surgery that night -only 20% of facial fractures require surgery he said Joe probably would need it at least for the cheek bone. They let us go home about 1 am and we saw the oral surgeon again at 9am. He said Joe definitely needs surgery. There are four main places that that part of the bone connects to the skull and Joe's is broken in three so he needs to go in and repair the fractures to stabalize the bone. He said we were very lucky the ball didn't hit him in the temple and that there was no damage to his eye. He saw an opthamologist this morning to check his eye thoroughly and it looks great! His vision is the same in both eyes. That is such a huge blessing. I am so grateful to our friends here. The waiting room in the ER had no less than 15 guys in it who wanted to see Joe and make sure he was okay. I had a ton of offers to take Haylee and help in any other way needed. We are so blessed! JOe will have surgery next Wendesday so I'll update after that he has never been under before and there is a very very very small risk to his vision so send your prayers our way.

And now for the ugly...well not really but here you go!

You can see the indentation on the left side of his face.

The blood in his eye will go away in a couple of weeks

The same picture as above but labeled so you can see where the fractures are.

He was in more pain today than yesterday but the swelling has gone down. He doesn't have feeling in his cheek or his upper lip on that side. Hopefully that will come back soon. I think you can click on the pictures to make them bigger. I'll keep you posted.