Give me a ‘break’...

(and the lows) of her daily life in Swansea

WHEN I was about nine, I fell off my horse, Clover. It wasn’t a rare occurrence – Clover was, for want of a better word, wild. She was stubborn, quite old (I don’t think we even knew how old she was) and never listened.

When the other horse would canter over to us in the field when we called them to take them riding, Clover would be the one at the bottom of the field, in the mud, refusing to move. And when I’d buckle a lead rein on to her, she’d nip me. Cantankerous springs to mind.

So it wasn’t unknown for her to stop mid-ride and lie down, decide she wanted to just go home and turn around and trot home despite all my efforts and commands for her to carry on. And then one day, she got “spooked” and decided to gallop home, turning on a corner so I came flying off and cracked a rib.

Apart from that, I’ve never broken anything (thank goodness, I don’t think I’d do well with broken limbs). Of course, having spent 11 years with James, the words “injury” and “broken” were a frequent conversation and many a day, week, month (and in the end, year) was taken up with rugby-related injuries.

When I had Archie and realised he was very much into sport, I figured I had better brace myself for everything that sport brings. Injury included.

We got to the grand old age of six before the words “broken bone” were uttered and, I’ll be honest, I was absolutely crushed.

Last Friday evening, after school we all went to the big new park in Penllergaer (thank you, council, it’s wonderful…) with all his schoolfriends for an hour.

After the zip line and climbing frames had been exhausted, they all played football. Half an hour later, I heard a scream and saw Archie on the floor in tears. He’d fallen while tackling someone and was clearly in pain. Like millions of times before, I gave him a cuddle, asked where it hurt (his knee) and gave him a chocolate muffin (in my eyes, an absolute cure-all!)

Then we needed to walk home as he had rugby, and to be honest, we were quite late… so Danielle and I ushered the boys back to the house as quick as we could. Archie was crying and limping and, like any doting mother, I did what we ALL would do in that situation. Told him he was fine and to hurry up walking because we were going to be late.

By the time we got home 25 minutes later (usually a 10-minute walk but the knee and the moaning at this point was at peak level), it was very swollen and Archie was now grey and sweating profusely. I had a feeling all was not well! Twenty minutes after that he returned from rugby training unable to do it and spent the rest of the night on the sofa in tears. I would have taken him to A&E that night but he was going to see the Wales v Italy game the next day and didn’t want to miss it (although, let’s be honest, Shake Shack Burger and a Coke Zero was probably the highlight of Saturday afternoon).

So James carried him around Cardiff to watch the game because he couldn’t put any weight on it!

Cue me then, Sunday morning, driving to A&E Neath Port Talbot minor injuries with Archie limping and Rose screaming we’d mistimed her nap and she was NOT happy! After an X-ray and a chat with the nurse, they advised that they indeed thought he’d broken his knee. Brilliant.

No sport, no school, no walking. Nothing. As I stood outside of the room with the nurse with Rose, who was screaming wildly, and Archie peering at me through the open door, wilfully looking on for some good news, I felt a sick sense of dread wash over me. How on Earth do you keep a six-yearold from moving their leg? Turns out… you can’t! I caught him trying to play football about eight times that day alone – DAY ONE of broken knee. We got sent packing with a knee brace and a promise that we’d hear from the fracture clinic with a proper diagnosis that week. Archie said it wasn’t actually hurting that much any more, but how much can you trust a sixyear-old who’d probably say they were fine to play sport if they were in a full-body cast? So when I received a call on Tuesday to say that he had an appointment on Friday, I asked to speak to a specialist before then, as I didn’t want to wait all week to find out if he’d broken it or not! I wanted to speak to someone there and then. So off we went to Neath Port Talbot hospital again on Tuesday afternoon, where I spent 20 minutes in the waiting room prepping Archie for “the broken knee chat” and that he’d have to stop all sport for a good few weeks.

He kept telling me he felt much better, which of course I rolled my eyes at and though OK, OK... (As it turns out, I should have trusted his judgement!)

Once we were in looking at the X-rays with the specialist, he spent a good few minutes oohing and aahing, before turning to us and saying that, in fact, there was no break at all.

Archie had bruised the ligament potentially but the specialist advised just to rest up a bit and, in his own words, “see how you go”. Well, Archie’s face lit up and he practically cartwheeled out of there, proclaiming he felt much better and that he was OK to go back to sport this weekend.

So as I’m writing this, and proofing the words before I send it off to print, he is in fact at rugby training.

The phone call to the school on Monday to prep work for potentially weeks at home turned into a phone call Wednesday morning to say he was on his way in… and I texted his football and rugby coaches to say that he was probably going to make it back for the weekend. To think of him going from a full six weeks of nothing to back playing rugby tonight in the space for four days is Lazarus levels of recovery!

So this Sunday, Mother’s Day, I’ll be spending the entire day back on the pitch, from 9am to 3pm as we do double sport, rugby and football and probably a KFC from Fforestfach on the way home. And I couldn’t be happier!