Rodney vs. the golf ball

As the title suggests, Rodney had a little encounter with a golf ball this weekend...and the golf ball won. Well, the golf ball won at first, but Rodney came out victorious in the end.

Rodney likes to spend his free time in the backyard hitting golf balls. He recently bought a net to hit into, so he doesn't have to chase the balls across the yard.

Saturday morning he was hitting balls into this net and I was inside. A few minutes later, he ran up on the porch yelling, "Help! Help!" I didn't hear the help part, I just thought he needed me for something, so I got up off the couch and opened the door. I found my husband with his hands cupped under his nose, full of blood. He had hit a ball perfectly into the pole on the side of the net and it ricocheted back straight into his nose. He found himself on the ground, half-concious, and stumbled up to the porch.

It was pretty scary, but we sat on the porch while we tried to get the bleeding to stop. Rodney was feeling weak and nauseous from the loss of blood and shock. We finally managed to get him inside to the kitchen table where I had him sip some Gatorade, which helped him a lot.

His nose finally stopped bleeding and we were able to sit back and gather our composure. The funny(?) part is that he had been recording his swing with our new video camera, and had just turned it off about a minute before he hit the rogue ball. I know I would have freaked out if I had seen it in person, but maybe not on video.

So that's the story of how the ball won. At first we thought his nose would swell up and be black and blue the next day, but as the day went on we realized he got hit mostly from the right side instead of straight on. This caused his nose to not look as bad, and only swell on the right side. This picture is from the day after and I added the arrow because you still can't see a huge difference. I didn't notice in person, but I can tell from looking at this picture that his right nostril is smaller because it is swollen.

He was a real trooper through the whole thing, and kept saying how he didn't know what he would have done if I hadn't been there. He said he would have stumbled down to his aunt's house (who lives right down the hill from us), but I think he would have passed out before he got there. I'm just glad everything turned out ok.

Since the accident, he has re-worked his net situation so that this won't happen again. He even got out there that same night and was back to hitting balls, although he admits he was a little cautious and gunshy.