Every time I told this story I just had to laugh. It is just so full of stereotypes, how could I not? You see, my avoids-team-sports-at-all-costs son broke his finger playing basketball, at Young Men’s. Don’t worry, I didn’t laugh at him, I was all appropriate pity and concern. But inside, I was just thinking of all those church ball jokes I heard growing up in the States. Obviously they are based on true stories!
It was a gorgeous evening, so instead of working on Duty to God like they had planned, they decided to go outside to the nearby park and play a little basketball. Just as they were about to quit and eat their watermelon it happened. Nick got his finger jammed when he went to grab the ball. His finger was poking out at a strange angle and they all thought it was just jammed. So they told Nick to pull on it to try and get it to go back in place. Which he did. Ouch! The leader, Jacob, is so good with the boys, especially Nick, and always tries to make things fun and interesting. You can tell how much he cares about the boys. He felt horrible that it happened on his watch, so to speak. I tried my best to reassure him that accidents happen and that we weren’t upset at all. Poor guy.
Anyway, we went to the hospital that night, and they took some x-rays. Sure enough, it was broken. And broken in such a way that a piece of the bone was completely separated from the main part, from one knuckle to the other. Which meant that Nick needed to go to a specialist to get it set. They just put a split on it and wrapped it up at the ER, and made an appointment for us with a hand surgeon at a bigger hospital in Zurich.
They ended up needing to operate and reattach the piece of bone with a screw. The operation was over pretty quickly, but he was very drowsy from the anesthesia and didn’t really wake up completely for about 4 hours. I just sat next to him and read the whole time. 
The best part of this whole ordeal is that he got out of P.E. for the rest of the school year. 🙂 Which meant he got home a whole two hours earlier every Thursday. That was a very nice bonus.
Now, I will give a warning to the squeamish. I am going to post a pic of his stitch. It is not bloody and it’s just one little stitch where they had to put in the super small screw. But some may not want to look, hence the warning.
It has since healed with no complications at all. The surgeon asked at a follow up appointment if he wanted the screw removed, but it isn’t bothering him, so they are leaving it in. Nick did need to attend about 4 physical therapy sessions to help his finger straight out again, but now you can’t even tell anything happened to it. Amazing.