Tanner Dodges a Bullet

Two weeks ago Tanner was at the straw maze with his friends. As he was running through the maze his left knee went out on him. He fell to the ground screaming. Of course, knowing Tanner, all of his friends thought he was joking. They finally figured out he really had hurt himself. They helped him to his car and brought him home.

When he got home I told him to tough it out. I wasn't going to make a trip to the emergency room for this. After a few days it seemed to get better. But after about four days when he was playing basketball during P.E. it went out on him again, only worse this time.

So his friend, Dillan, drove him to Community Care and Layne met him there. He got it x-rayed and luckily they said nothing was broken. But they recommended he see an orthopedic surgeon to make sure there wasn't any more damage.

They got us in to the doctor the next day. Tanner's leg was so swollen the doctor couldn't examine it very well. He ordered an MRI to find out if there was any further damage. Thankfully we got good news. There was no ligament or meniscus damage and there was no defect that caused it, just one of those lucky accidents. The patella just dislocated and when it did it knocked against the bone and bruised the bone. So it will probably take about a month to heal. The doctor told Tanner to keep wearing his brace and prescribed some physical therapy to build up the muscles around the knee cap.

I meant to get a picture of the kneed when it first happened to show how swollen it was, but it didn't happen. So use your imagination. It was about twice the size of his good knee.