"Hey Cowboy, nice shiner!"

So once upon a time I went to a friendly little game of stake softball.  I was the only girl playing plus we were short a team member or two so we forfeited.  Well church ball is for fun right?  Especially when one team has technically already lost, right?  Well, you would be wrong to think this.  The team we played were very grumpy.  Complaining about the lack of girls on our team, mocking our not-professional-level playing, and yelling at the little old men from the high council acting as umpires over every little call.  I was playing catcher and could hear every little annoyed comment they would make.  I thought it was pretty funny and somewhat ridiculous.  There was one kid in particular who was mad about everything and was not about to be quiet about it.

Well a few innings in, the extra grumpy boy decided he needed to bat two times in a row.  Because that makes total sense.  He had a good hit but when they were throwing the ball in to me I figured he'd stop at third base.  He didn't.  I caught the ball at home and ran over to the third baseline so that I could tag him out.  A normal 260 pound man playing a friendly game of church softball would think oh I better slow down and let her tag me, or at least try to dodge her.  But he was already super angry I was the only girl on the team and I guess figured he might as make it so no girls would ever want to play again, and so he put his shoulder into it and kept on running.

All I remember hearing was a crack and suddenly I was several feet behind home plate, flat on my back.

He had hit me smack in the eye with what I assume was his shoulder.  The first thing I remember hearing was the dumb boy saying in an annoyed tone "Well we're not allowed to slide so I had to slam into her".  He then interrupted the old man trying to check on me to ask if he was safe or not.  That happened to be when Dan made it in from center field.  He heard the kid worrying about whether he'd scored or not and in an appropriate reaction asked the stupid boy if he was kidding and threw his mitt at him.  Well angry boy didn't like that too much and decided to take a swing at Dan.  Luckily a few guys from his ward jumped on him to hold him back and for the next five minutes or so all I could hear was boy and his wardies yelling at each other.

Luckily a cute little RN from another ward came over about then so I could stop paying attention to that.  Eventually she was able to get me into the nearby church where I rested up for like an hour trying not to cry or throw up.  In the meantime, word-I-shouldn't-say-boy was just hanging out outside, eating the dinner the stake served up and acting like he hadn't just done anything to be embarrassed by.  In case you all were wondering, no he did not ever ask if I was okay nor apologize and yes, I got him out.

About an hour or two after it happened.

So RN girl said I should be fine and we went home.  Only to discover a few hours later that I was seeing double.  Like two completely separate Dan's several feet away from each other.  So off to the hospital we went.  At the ER Dan decided to be real cute and when they asked how I got hurt, he responded with, "She talked back".  Adorable huh?  They gave me a CAT scan and such and determined that I had two fractures in my ocular cavity.  One below my eye and one that went into my sinuses.  Then he sent this info on to a plastic surgeon/facial reconstructive surgeon and made me an appointment with him just in case.  Can I just say that CAT scans are hard!  You have to hold your breath for 30 seconds which I laughed about because it seemed pretty easy.  But you can't exhale at all and there's no way to keep track of the time so I got to the point holding my breath that I thought, maybe he just forgot to tell me it's okay to breathe now... He hadn't.  Then I had to hold it again and that was harder because I was on my stomach with my face propped up and I couldn't swallow either plus the whole time it's sticking me through the scan in jerky motions that make me want to swallow/breathe.  I nearly failed.

Dead in the E.R.

Anyway, already super long story made longer, plastic surgery man called me the next morning (a Friday) and said I definitely needed surgery and I needed to meet with him Monday for a pre-op.  Because no I did not have two little fractures that may heal on their own.  I had a complete blow-out of the bottom shelf of my ocular cavity.  Basically the bone that my eyeball rests on was no longer there.  My muscle was trapped up inside it, pushing my eyeball upward and causing the double vision.  My surgery wasn't until Wednesday so in the mean time I got myself an eye patch and determined to scare small children.  Dan was a super husband though and wore an eye patch with me to church so I wouldn't feel so dumb.  Oh and side-note, even though we went home from church early that day I heard the bishop had a little talk with the Relief Society to assure them that this kind of stuff usually didn't happen and encourage them to play.  Hilarious.  We also found out that the bum-head boy who broke my face has tourettes.  A few people told us this to try to make an excuse for his non attempts at not shattering my face but I'm sorry, tourettes does not cause aggression and according to the special ed teacher at my school, wouldn't even cause a child to be taken out of a regular classroom as he would be harmless.  Sorry if I sound all mean there.  I'm just confused by why everyone thinks tourettes gives him just cause for the particular behavior he displayed.  Besides, even if it did happen to cause aggression in this boy, shouldn't he be responsible enough as a grown-up to think, hey maybe I shouldn't play?  There's nothing I can do about it now and luckily, I'm doing pretty well but I feel they should maybe ban the kid from playing after this.  Especially since the stake informed us this boy has already had a few warnings about his overly aggressive behavior in church sports.

I'm a pirate.

 Sick of lying around.

 This is when it started getting super pretty.  (The bandana made a much more comfortable eye patch.)

So anyway, I had me some surgery.  It went well.  They had my eye sort of sewed shut for the next couple days until it started cutting into my upper eyelid.  That was fun.  Dan had to cut the suture and pull it through my bottom eyelid and nearly lost his lunch doing so.  He also went nuts staying home with me for the next two days.  I didn't have to take any pain pills, I assume because of my numb face.  Did I mention my numb face?  Apparently I got hit so hard that it stunned a main nerve in my face.  The same one the dentist would numb up and so pretty much the entire right side of my face was numb. I'm still seeing double just because the muscles are still inflamed and such.  They said it would last about a month.  And while most my face has un-numbed itself, I still can't feel three of my upper teeth, my upper gums, half of my top lip and up into my right nostril.  Mostly that's the worst part.  

I'm so sexy. 

(This is about two hours after my surgery.)

 I miss my pretty eye.