For my young friend McGuire and his dad Andy, this has been “the worstest Christmas ever.”
Last Wednesday, McGuire, who’s 4 1/2, had surgery to remove his tonsils and adenoids. Everything went fine.
Then on Friday, he and a friend were playing outside, and McGuire asked his dad to take him for a ride on the golf cart.
Andy, who thought McGuire was getting a little too rambunctious anyway, thought that would be safe.
Wrong.
I’ll let McGuire tell you what happened.
“When we were coming home from the golf cart ride, Daddy put on the brakes and the brakes locked up on him. And I fell off the golf cart and then my dad ran over me.”
“He didn’t see him fall off,” big sister McKenna adds helpfully.
McGuire goes on.
“It broke my leg. And I got a hole in my sock.”
Did it hurt?
“Bad,” McGuire says.
“He wouldn’t stop screaming,” McKenna says.
“And then Daddy brought me inside and my mom came running down the stairs. We went to the hospital. I was crying on my X-ray. My mom was holding my hand. I tried to tell her not to and she wouldn’t let go.”
“The X-rays were quite traumatic,” says mom Sabrina.
Sure enough, they revealed that McGuire’s leg was broken. His foot bones aren’t quite fully formed yet, so they had enough flexibility, his mom explained, when the cart ran over his left foot. But the impact caused McGuire’s tibia to snap.
It’s hard to know who’s suffered worse, McGuire or Andy.
“You didn’t mean to do it,” McKenna tells her dad.
But, Andy says, “It’s daddy’s job to keep you safe and keep you from getting hurt.”
He knows he failed to do his job that day.
But McGuire ó who to tell you the truth is milking this for all it’s worth ó really seems no worse for the wear.
“Nobody mess with my leg!” he says, tapping his cast.
He’ll have to wear it for several weeks. It’s much better than the original splint he had, and he’s not in nearly as much pain now, thank goodness.
The upside of all this is that visitors ó grandmothers included ó have been bringing presents that don’t have anything to do with Christmas.
“I want people to bring me presents,” McGuire says. “I want YOU to bring me presents.”
Yes, McGuire, I’ll get right on that.
And we’ll have to see if we can do something about poor Daddy, too. This time last year, Andy was undergoing radiation treatment following cancer surgery.
“This is way worse than that,” Andy says. “I’d much rather have that than this.”
But, Sabrina says. “We’re all at home, and we’re all together. We’re all gonna be OK.”
A broken bone and a daddy’s broken heart will heal.