The First of Many, I'm Sure

On one Thursday towards the end of March, I was just getting off the interstate in Provo to head to one of my final classes. I was mentally going through my class and what I needed to cover since we only had a few class periods left. I was also trying to figure out what I needed to do as soon as class was over because about an hour after I got home from class, Chad and I were flying to Denver to go to the NCAA gymnastics regionals with the BYU gymnastics team. Suddenly, my phone rang. I didn't recognize the number, but it was a Spanish Fork number, so I decided to answer it anyway. On the phone was the nurse from Cole's school calling to tell me that he had split his chin open on the monkey bars and she thought he needed stitches. At first I started to panic because amazingly, this was the first major injury that we have had with the kids and I was 30 minutes away. So, I told the nurse I couldn't get there right away, but I would find someone to come get him. After hanging up the phone, I tried to call 3 different people before finding someone that was home that could pick him up from school until I could get home. Then, I called Chad trying to figure out which one of us could hurry home faster to take him to the doctor before we had to catch our flight. (Although at that point, I wasn't sure if I was even still going to go.) After Chad told me he could leave right then to go get him, I called the doctor to see if they could hurry and get Cole in for stitches. Then, I had to call Chad back and give him all of the arrangements, followed by calling my friend back and telling her Chad was on his way to take Cole to the doctor. As I hung up the phone the last time, I had an overwhelming feeling of gratitude for cell phones and the fact that I was able to make all of those arrangements before I even made it to campus. Then, I went in and taught my class, probably less effectively, for about half of the normal class time before calling it a day to go home and check on my poor little boy and decide if I could handle leaving him after his major trauma.
I arrived home about 5 minutes before they did and as Cole was hopping out of the car, he was reassuring me that he was fine and I should still go on the trip. He even insisted that the doctor had said he was ok to play in his soccer game that night. (I think a lot of this was coaching from his dad, but it made me feel slightly better!) After listening to Chad describe the injury and what the doctor did, I was grateful that Chad was the one that had taken him. It was making me sick to my stomach just listening and I couldn't look at the actual injury or the pictures that Chad took and this was after it was all cleaned up! I can't imagine having to look at it fresh and undoctored! The pictures and descriptions still make me slightly ill to look at!
Here are various pictures of the injury, for those who like to see such things!
And a video shot by his dad as he's waiting to get stitched up!

This is the wound about a week later, looking slightly better, but still making me a little ill.
Needless to say, Cole survived just fine and even played in part of his soccer game that night. He went back to school the next day and had celebrity status because of his stitches! Chad and I went on our trip and hopefully didn't permanently scar him (or me!) by leaving him! And most of all, we all survived our first tramatic injury!