A Really Funny Story

This is one of those funny stories that I just have to tell. It was a Friday night and we were all home. Marissa was leaving for a friend's house and Mark was going to Walmart to get the girls fish and I was going to Walmart for groceries. For some strange reason, I decided that Mark and I should both drive separate. We all got in our cars and left at about the same time. We had been at Walmart about 15 minutes when my phone rang and it was Marissa's friend's mom. She was calling to say that Marissa had dislocated her shoulder and I needed to come get her. Mark was at a different part of Walmart and I tried calling him, but he didn't answer his phone. I then quickly walked around Walmart and found him and told him I needed to leave to go get Marissa. I said I would buy my groceries and then leave.I had a container of ice cream in my cart and Mark told me that if I was going to buy the ice cream I needed to make sure that I didn't forget about it and leave it in the car. I assured him that I would. I checked out and left and was about half way between Walmart and where Marissa was when Mark phoned me. Mark was calling to remind me about the ice cream. While we were on the phone, a call beeped in and so I put Mark on hold while I answered it. It was Morgan calling from the customer service counter to tell me that she can't find Dad. I told her I was talking to him and to wait there and he would come get her. I then switched back to Mark and told him where to find his lost kids. I got to Marissa and she was in ALOT of pain. She had dislocated her shoulder while doing a full twist off of the diving board. After we got in the car, I considered dropping off the ice cream at home, but decided that it was more important to get Marissa to the hospital quickly. A few minutes later my phone rang again. It was Mark, once again concerned about the ice cream. By this point it had sunk in to me that not having melting ice cream in the car was VERY IMPORTANT to Mark and I was going to make sure that didn't happen. However, I just saw taking care of Marissa as a higher priority. We drove to the emergency room and went inside. They checked Marissa in quickly because she was in so much pain. After giving them the initial info, I ran outside and threw the ice cream away. I was going to call Mark right then to say the ice cream was taken care of, but I wasn't getting cell phone reception and Marissa was so miserable that I wanted to stay with her. They got her to a room quickly, but it was still several hours before they had done the necessary x-rays etc and could put the shoulder back into place.

When the emergency room doctor came in to Marissa's room, I noticed his name tag so I realized who he was. However, Marissa had no clue. He immediately asked her if she had a sister named Maddie who was having a birthday party tomorrow. Marissa was completely perplexed as to how the Dr. would know such a thing. It turned out that the Dr. was the Dad of one of the girls whom Maddie had invited to her party. The girl had said that she couldn't come, because they had some other conflicts with older siblings. However, after making some other arrangements and the Dr. calling his wife, Kristen was able to come to Maddie's birthday party the next day. Marissa noted that at least Maddie was getting something good out of her pain.
On Sunday we had Stake Conference. There was a family sitting behind us from another ward, that we'd never met. However, the little girl recognized Marissa as her gymnastics teacher and the Mom recognized Marissa from girls camp. They talked to us afterwards and the Dad told us that he was an orthopedic surgeon. We were able to get Marissa in to him on Tuesday which worked out great. Marissa had to wear her shoulder immobilizer for a few weeks. She also did physical therapy for a month or so. As I write this story, it has been four months since it happened and so far she hasn't dislocated it again. The chance of dislocating it again is very high, but the longer she goes without dislocating it, the better the chances are that she won't dislocate it again.