***Potentially graphic material…continue with caution***
Real Life On The Field Scenarios: Last week we were at debrief in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, over an hour away from the closest town. Our time was restful and rejuvenating, and the views were stunning and absolutely beautiful. During our last afternoon the guys were playing a “friendly” game of American football on the soccer field. It felt great to run around and play a sport that we haven’t played since before we left back in August (it took us most of our race to find a football). When guys are playing sports competitively sometimes things get ugly and accidents happen…
The second half of our game quickly came to an end when Eli dove for a touchdown pass trying to help even-out the score. One of the other guys jumped to break it up and they both got tangled up going after the ball. As they fell to the ground, Eli slid across the grass and smashed the back of his head against the soccer post, making a loud gong sound and splitting his head open. One of the guys immediately grabbed his head and held it still while applying pressure to it to keep it from bleeding worse than it already was. Thankfully, some of the women on my squad have nursing experience and helped in tending to his head. We walked him over to some stairs to sit in the shade. Another one of the guys on our squad was a surgical assistant before the race and has a lot of experience stitching people up. After cleaning up the wound the best we could, I looked up and he had a literal sewing needle and thread and was putting on gloves to stitch Eli’s head together. I thought it was a joke at first, but he was serious. Eli knew what had to be done and was ready for it. We put a mini ice pack, one you could find in a small first aid kit, on the wound to numb his head as much as possible before stitching him up. Then the sewing/stitching began and Eli took it like a man and you would’ve thought a real doctor had actually stitched it up.
The reason I share this story is because sometimes on the race we don’t have everything we need right at our fingertips, and have to use the limited resources we do have. It has helped us all learn to be thankful and grateful for so many things back in America. Eli is alive and well and his head is healing up very nicely!
