Sport ist Mord

The Germans have a saying: Sport ist Mord. Translated, it means Sports are Murder. Well, Dana did her best to prove that old saying correct. She has been playing in a co-ed indoor-soccer league for the past eight weeks, and she has come home injured nearly every single week. Mostly they were bumps and bruises, a twisted ankle or an aching knee. But she saved the best for last.

During her last game, she gallantly stopped a shot on goal. Her unorthodox style of playing defense has been very effective. She really is very good, and kept getting better through the whole season. On the last game, against their rivals in the league, one of the male players took a shot on goal. Dana was the only defender between him and the goal. She could not reach the ball with her feet, or her chest, so she stopped it with:

Her Face!

It was awesome! (and scary, too). I was standing on the sidelines watching her play, looked away for a second, then heard a pop, looked over and saw Dana reach up to grab her face as she fell over backwards. I vaulted over the side wall and ran up to check on her. She had blood in her eye, her cheek was cut open, and she was crying like. . .well, like she just got smashed in the face by a soccer ball, really.

Of course, game play stopped dead. Dana's team was in the lead 6 to 5, and time was running out of the game. Everyone else on the field was worried about Dana, but what was Dana worried about? She kept asking me if her injury had burned enough time off the clock to secure her team the win! Isn't she amazing? I easily have the toughest and coolest wife on the planet.

But we were all really worried about her, and people kept telling us to go to the doctor and get it checked out. We got some ice to put on the eye, and called the eye surgeon we have on retainer (Thanks, Dr. Waite!!!) We weighed everyone's advice and decided to wait for a night and see how it looked in the morning.

This picture is after a few days of healing. Turns out that everything was alright, and that the ball didn't actually hit her eye, just a whole lot of her face around her eye. She even had a bruise from the stitches of the ball on her forehead. (That was my personal favorite.) She did end up going to the eye doctor and he said that everything looked good.

In the end, Dana's heroics secured (or at least helped secure) a tie for first place for her team. We also learned that Dana is a quick healer from all of this: One week later there was not even a trace of bruising to be found on her anywhere. Like I said, she is tough.

So that was our latest adventure. Dana is now on the mend from all her scrapes and boo-boos, but looking forward to the successes and injuries of next season.