Caleb has had very few injuries since he began gymnastics. We have seen a number of the boys in the gym break or fracture bones and just counted ourselves grateful that this hadn’t happened to Caleb . . . yet (knock on wood, right?).
Last night I got ‘the call’ from the gym telling me that Caleb had injured his finger. He was being very tough and just nonchalantly went up to his coach, Roger, and told him he thought something may be wrong with his finger. Roger took one look at his finger and said he almost fainted. He had never seen anything like it. The entire nail had been pulled back and was bleeding underneath. He put the nail back down and tried to assess the other damage to the fingertip and began icing it. By the time I got to the gym, Caleb was very subdued and icing his finger. The tip of it had already turned black and blue – under the nail and the actual finger pad.
It seems like such a little thing – an injured finger tip, but hopefully it doesn’t get infected. It is most probable he will lose the entire nail since it was pulled back all the way and bruised but we shall see. We did take pictures but we’ll spare you – it looked pretty gross last night.
The big question I had for Caleb – how did he do it? Not doing any gymnastics routines or tricks, but moving the floor pommel horse with the other boys. He had the front end and the boys with the back end pushed before he had a good hold on it, pushing his nail back and crushing part of his finger. It is amazing what those boys move. I am convinced they get a lot of their upper body strength from moving gym equipment (mats, mushrooms, etc.) as they always move them for their workouts and then put them all away when they are done.
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