A Real Pain in the Ass

This weekend was an eventful one; visits from friends, dance parties in the kitchen, dog walks in the snow, birthday celebrations and the like. good stuff. And then I got the call on Saturday afternoon--Adam was hurt while snowboarding and needed to go to the ER. He had sliced his ass open on a rock while we had been snowboarding out of bounds with friends. Yes you read this right, his ASS.

Here's Adam's full account of the ass rippin' event:
"I was at the top of the Shuksan arm, a ridge full of popular snowboarding runs just a short hike from the Mt. Baker ski area, with my snowboard mates Misch, Chris and Jonnie. We were all planning to begin our runs from a feature we've been calling the "nipple". I went to the left of the nipple and everyone else decided to go off to the right, separating us from voice and eye contact. The snow was new, deep and dry, so I thought I would try to jump off a finger shaped drop where someone else had gone earlier that day. I peeked around the side of the drop to make sure the snow was good, and it was. After falling a few fun feet I hit the snow and it was harder then I was expecting and I was too hard on my heel edge. My board slipped out from under me and I bounced down the steep terrain and took a butt check. Unluckily, there was a sharp rock lurking under the snow and I landed right on top of it, knocking the thin layer of snow off. My friends didn't see my fall or hear my surprised yelp when I hit, so I took a brief minute to do a systems check and rode to the right around the base of the nipple to meet them. When I saw Jonnie I told him I needed a minute to gather my self and that I felt a little nauseous and dizzy. As an after thought I stuck my hands down my pants to see if I was bleeding, and to my surprise I was and I could feel that I had a cut on my butt. My pants also felt fairly wet and I was worried that it was more blood then snowmelt. From there I went down the mountain in a bit of a hurry and met a ski patroller near the return to the ski area. He kindly looked in my pants, seemed duly impressed and escorted me to the aid room. The rest of the story was fairly well documented by camera."

And there you have it. Adam was in good spirits during out trip to the ER--he got 5 stitches. The staff was very friendly and definitely entertained by Adam's injury--I do believe he was the talk of the ER that day.

I am very thankful that his injury was minor.

And without further ado, here are the fabulous photos. If you are sensitive to icky things, you might want to skip them.

Here's Adam being carefully inspected--doesn't he look like he's posing for a senior photo?


Here's the cut, cleaned out and ready to be stitched


Adam and the doc clocking in some quality time


Suture


I'm hoping for this to be the last of our snowboarding injuries this year :)