Broken toes

Rory arrived off the bus from school today with 2 toes on his right foot broken, bruised and strapped together and him struggling along with a crutch and his school bag and his football boot bag. Lucky I was home (worked from home today) when he texted from the bus to tell me he was hurt and I was able to zip down to the bus stop and collect him.

In the 3 years he’s been at his high school, he has developed quite a relationship with the school nurse - she’s stitched his cut feet more than once, she’s waited with him while the ambulance arrived when he was knocked out on the sports field, she’s strapped broken fingers on at least 3 separate occasions and iced his strained muscles, she’s given him panadol and a quiet place to sit when he started getting headaches last year and generally looked out for him and rung me as required. Most weeks he visits the sick bay for one injury or another, thankfully he usually only requires a sticking plaster or an icepack for 10 minutes and then he’s off again. She’s an older lady and she claims he’s her reason for not retiring yet – he makes her feel useful :-)

Rory is not particularly accident prone, he’s just a big strong very active boy, he’s 15 and just reached 182cm, (or fractionally over 6” for the non-metricated amongst us) and spends every lunch time with his mates playing either their own variation of American football or something else they call Canadian Forceback . All I know is that sewing up his school uniform shirts and trousers (he’s at a single sex school with quite a formal uniform) is a weekly occurrence when they comes home ripped, with buttons missing and almost always covered in grass stains. At least once a week he’s got a massive new bruise or two somewhere. After all the orthodontic work he’s had I insist he wears a mouth guard at all times playing these full contact ‘games’ and so far no damage thankfully to his pearly whites.

Apparently one of his mates landed on his foot with his knee while they were playing at lunch time today and his poor toes are very obviously broken, bruised and very swollen. We hardly bother with x-rays and doctors visits for toes these days as there’s nothing they can do besides strapping when they’re broken anyway.

He’s not complaining but is worried that his football (soccer) team are mustering within the next couple of weeks to get started on training before the season starts, and he wants to be in good shape for that.

I’m lucky he’s a tough kid.