Saturday, February 2, 2008

Another MMA-Related Injury

This last week has been a bad one for injuries. A typical astrology-following Vancouverite might say it was due to Mars being in retrograde or something. But really, every so often, shit just happens. And thanks to my student Ray, I have a little photo record of the most recent "happening."

My MMA coach was sick with the stomach flu so a couple of my students stayed behind after class to spar with me and give me a bit of a workout. I was doing MMA-style sparring and grappling with Julian who is about 30 lbs. heavier than me.



At one point, I was rolling Julian over from the bottom of guard position and I rolled him over into a fitness ball. This on its own wouldn't have been bad. However, because his upper body was propped up by the ball, my forehead smashed into his eyebrow forcefully as I rolled on top of him, splitting open the skin (shown below after having been cleaned off).



Of course, we didn't realize what had happened so we kept rolling. Ten seconds later I got him flat on his stomach and stetched him out, finishing him with a rear naked choke. As he got up and turned to face me, it was then that I saw that his face was covered in blood, much like Joe Stevenson's was during the BJ Penn fight in the most recent UFC.

I quickly broke out my first aid kit and cleaned the cut off. Unfortunately, there were no butterfly enclosures in the sport first aid kit that I had, so the best I could do was staunch the bleeding and suggest he see a doctor for stitches. It's really amazing how little it takes to open up the skin so much on the forehead area as well as how much blood those suckers can pump out.



It was too late for Julian to get stitches by the time he went to see the doctor the next day, but he assured me that it's healing over and that I need not worry. It was an accident and these things happen in the martial arts. It was much the same as I had said to Tasia last week when she was a flood of apologies for the black eye she had given me (also a faultless accident).

Nonetheless, I can't help but hope that his eyebrow hairs will at least grow over any resulting scar.

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