"I am never skiing again!"-Brandon

Well as you can tell by the title of this post, something bad must've happened to Brandon when we went skiing a few weeks ago. For our one month anniversary I came home and found a pretty vase with flowers in it along with a lovely card and two lift passes to the Canyons ski resort. My thoughtful Brandon knows that I enjoy skiing and believed it would be a great gift and a fun activity for us to do together. If only he knew what was in store!

I took a day off from school and we rented some skis and headed up Parley's Canyon. It was a gorgeous day. Absolutely beautiful! Sunny and new snow. Perfect for a day on the slopes! After a few small delays we finally started our first run of the morning. We both were trying to feel out our ski legs and had routed out some ideas for runs and then were headed off. Not 5 minutes, probably more like 3 minutes into our first run, was when "it" happened.

Right next to a huge orange sign draped across the middle of the run was the words "SLOW DOWN" with a ski patrol guy standing next to it. So we slowed down but then suddenly Brandon's left ski comes loose and he's shot forward and lands sort of on his side with his left arm extended, head pointing downhill. His other ski breaks loose and he tumble slides to a stop dropping his poles too. I'm behind him and can't believe my eyes!

I get to him almost as fast as the Ski Patrol guy. I grab his gear so that it doesn't go sliding down hill and check what happened. Brandon feels like he may have dislocated and then popped his shoulder back in, and it hurts really bad to the point that he feels sick to his stomach.

The Ski Patrol calls for a sled to be brought down so they can take him to the clinic that is luckily right on-site at the Canyons with a full medical facility.

A little lady shows up with the sled in tow and the two ski patrollers proceed to help move Brandon into it. As they are tucking him into the sled I hear Brandon say, "I am never skiing again!" Just before they wisk him away at top speeds down the rest of the run blowing a whistle to clear the way. I follow behind much slower.

We get to the clinic where they have a nurse, a doctor, and even an X-ray machine. Here's a picture of Brandon waiting to see the results of his X-ray!
You can tell is thrilled to be there! He actually was being a great sport and kept joking with the nurse. Here are the X-rays:
You can't see much from this, but as the Doctor explained to us, Brandon ended up with a Greater Tuberosity Fracture. Sounds fancy huh? It is basically on the top of his humerus bone and he actually has two small fractures on the round part on the top. If you know about shoulders and arms, you know that there are lot of ligaments and muscles that attach to this bone and hold it in place.

The verdict was that Brandon would be in a lot of pain for the first week or so and that it would take 6 weeks to heal! This bummed him out. He was looking forward to getting out on his road bike and training for the Cactus Hugger in St. George in April. Definitely can't ride his bike with this problem! Sad.

I had to ride the gondola down solo to get the truck and come and pick Brandon up at the clinic. We did get another lift pass for the both of us and a refund on our skis that we think weren't set right, not that Brandon is going to go with me.

The good news is that Brandon is on the mend and can now ride his bike for short rides. I also got a road bike, so we can enjoy getting outdoors together! But just not skiing anymore.