Sports, Injuries, and My Husband

Of all of the sports in the entire world, my dear husband plays rugby. When I first met him, I had maybe seen rugby once in my life and had thought that it was very random that he played it. I knew it was big in England, but I didn't know it was anything big in the States. He grew up with a bunch of Tongan friends (rugby is huge in polynesian islands) so that's how he got started. He loves it, and luckily, I do too now. It is SOOO much better than football, I cannot emphasize that enough. If he played football, I might have to shoot myself. Let me break down some major advantages of rugby to football.

1. Football game= 4 hours!
Rugby game= 2 hours

2. Football game= Play lasts for 20 seconds, whistle blows and play stops for about a minute while everyone huddles, chats, and wastes time. Repeat this process for hours on end.
Rugby game= Play DOES NOT STOP....period. They are continually moving, running, tackling, rucking, and lining out. The only time play stops is if there is an injury. If that happens, they take the amount of injury time used and play for that much longer at the end of the game to make up for the time.

3. Since rugby isn't so big here, the people who play all kinda become like a big rugby family. Parents, siblings, spouses, and friends all travel to watch their team play and often get together afterwards for barbeques or dinner out. You don't have to deal with huge stadiums full of drunk, loud fans with jerseys and face paint. You know almost everyone at the games because you've seen them all year long at all the other games. I just really like it!

Now, figuring that Adam plays this rough sport, you'd think he's likely to get hurt once in a while, and yes, you're right. There have been two injuries (not counting sprained ankles, jammed fingers, major knee problems that will need to be fixed in a year or two, and countless bruises and cleat marks) since we've been engaged.

The first injury came the night before our engagement pictures. I had come down from Logan to SLC to meet Adam and then drive to Provo that night to get our pics done the next day. Adam was at practice so I went downtown to do some shopping. I got a call from him not long after I dropped him off at the field and I knew something was wrong. Not anything big, but he had to get stitches right above his eye! I was kind of freaking out because we really needed to get our pictures done and I didn't want my fiance' to have a black eye or visible marks on his face for them. Luckily, his eye didn't puff up too much and our photographer was able to airbrush them out of most of the shots. Yay!

The second injury was to the head yet again. This time, it was directly on top of his head. We took him to the ER and he received 2 staples. The cost of those 2 staples and the one minute of the doctor's time? $ 730!!! We were totally poor and didn't even have health insurance so that bill came directly to us. Luckily, the hospital was so nice and worked with us and only made us pay $75 and wrote off the rest! The physician, however, was not so helpful and still we footed his bill of $407.

This year of rugby was completely hospital visit free I am proud to report. However, the one night Adam goes and plays basketball at the church, this is what happens:







That's right, three stitches and a huge black eye. Go figure. Adam took these pictures himself since I was out of town. We were so lucky though because one of our good friends' brother-in-law is a surgeon so they went to his house and he gave Adam a butterfly bandage and told him to come to his office in the morning and he'd stitch it up for free. I was so thankful for that because yet again, he doesn't have insurance. Think we ought to look into that? ;)