And the Guys' Weekend...

We women had a fabulous weekend in Chicago (as described in my previous post) but I neglected to tell you about the Guys' Weekend. One would expect a Guy's Weekend to include lots of pizza and football, and apparently, they came through on both of those counts. But the real story of the weekend was the fishing trip.

The men decided that since the girls were having such a fab time doing "girl stuff" that they would take this opportunity to spend the day fishing. They rented a pontoon boat at the lake and spent the afternoon swimming, driving around the lake like maniacs, and, of course, fishing. All the children wore life jackets- well and good- but beyond that, there were some... safety issues. With no women around to ensure that proper safety precautions were observed (i.e, we do not throw fishing tackle at each other) things went quickly downhill. During one unfortunate toss of the needlenose pliers, John's hand was punctured in the tendon below his middle finger. Since there were no women to see that he received proper medical care, and due to the convenient fact that his finger immediately went numb, he kept fishing. But later that night, things got bad.

John's finger began throbbing painfully, causing my generally anti-drug husband to begin digging in drawers for the unused Vicodin from a surgery a couple of years ago. He also needed a splint to protect his finger from movement, but it was late and he was tired. He devised a plan. After looking in the freezer and finding two popsicles left in the box, he made a deal with Nathanael and Ben, who were lucky enough to be underfoot at that moment: You can each have a popsicle if you don't tell the others and if you give me the sticks when you're done! Well, sure, dad! They quickly and quietly wolfed down their treats and John, in typical male-can-do fashion, created a splint out of popsicle sticks and duct tape.

The next day, Sunday, he went to the pharmacy and purchased a real splint, which he had to jerry-rig to fit his now swollen hand. After church, he spent the rest of the afternoon in front of the TV in a Vicodin-induced fog. When we returned home late that evening, he was o-u-t.

The next day I tried to convince him to go to the doctor and finally, after doing research on the internet and finding that if he wanted continued use of his right hand he ought to see a doctor, to the doctor he went. The doctor told him that since it was a punctured tendon, rather than a sliced tendon, it would have to heal on its own. He did prescribe a new super-antibiotic though, since the real danger from this wound was infection from all the nasty lake-and-fish germs. If the wound became infected, it would require surgery and other unpleasant things. SO, although his hand has been in pretty much constant pain this week, it is improving. The swelling has gone down significantly and he has much better movement. He hopes to be back to normal early next week.

And the moral of this story? Depends on who you ask. Ask me and I'll tell you that this is proof that men need their wives around to keep them from killing themselves. Ask my husband and he'll tell you that it's true... duct tape does it all.