Recap Friday May 21

I just want to stretch!!! You know the kind of morning stretch that goes all the way to your toes?!? I can with my right, but the left side is still fighting some pretty intense pain.
On Friday around 3:30 in the afternoon I was at track practice. Our kids had just won the Lake Orion Tri-Meet the day before and we were gearing up for a medium-ly challenging practice before the weekend and the Monday's League Meet. After a nice chat in the gym about League expectations and a lovely and normal warm up and stretch, I felt a prideful challenge when Mr. Z, the head coach, began to juggle. So, to try to best Coach Z, I did an ariel (no handed cartwheel) and that was great. And It was time to stop messing around and get the kids back on track (no pun intended, but it does work nicely here). OH BUT NOOOOO, who is in the mood to work on a sunny Friday afternoon, the day after a win, the day before the weekend...not my kids... not yet! "C'mon Coach Maurer, do a back flip." For the record, I said, "no" at first and "let's get to work!" But the egging on was persistent and I do enjoy my moments in the spotlight and not to mention Coach Z was also in on the encouraging...So I did what every self respecting almost 36 year-old, mother of three, middle school track coach would do... I did a round off back handspring back tuck! Only, for the first time in my many years of performing this very basic tumbling pass, I heard and felt a tear - rrrrriiiiiiiiiipppppp - between the back handspring and the back tuck and right then and there I knew exactly what had happened.
I was calm and I knew what was going on and Coach Z was focused and efficient and the kids seemed to be frozen in space. For me the pain grew in intensity very quickly. I started to sweat and the colors that I saw were getting pale and washed out. The sounds were echo-ey and tin-ey. And as strange luck would have it the team pictures were being delivered that day and Dear Denise Meadows said, "Is there anything I can do?" and she was immediately nominated driver. Although she had her own deliveries to make and work to accomplish she kindly drove me all the way to Rochester to the Crittenton Emergency Room per my request to go to a hospital and not just urgent care. She was most careful to hit as few bumps as possible and even shared with me a story of her own about she and her husband bouncing back from and deer/motorcycle accident!
The emergency room was uneventful, I mean REALLY uneventful in that there was no one available to do the surgery that evening. We did find someone who was willing to fix it in the morning so home we went with a half cast and a bottle of pain medicine.