The last two months have been extremely interesting for me as an athletic trainer. This is my first year as a professional athletic trainer and I am working in the always eventful high school setting. Everyone I know has always told me that the first year is the toughest, and that you will see the craziest stuff during that year. Well, so far no one is lying. When I am working by myself it is usually eventful and never lacks a dull moment, however when the other athletic trainer is working you can hear the crickets chirp. The running joke is that if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen when I’m there…which has its pro’s and con’s. The one thing I have definitely learned is that you have to find the humor in things or you will never catch a breath.
Yes, parent phone calls can be dreadful and weekend warrior injuries can beat you down before its even 8 am on Monday morning but it is part of our job, and we have to carry out these tasks along with many others. There have been many interesting injury evaluations since the beginning of August with my personal favorite being the mysterious referred pain. The athlete comes into the athletic training room stating that he was hit in the jaw last night in the game. He then states that his jaw isn’t hurting because the pain is in his ribs… is it possible to have referred pain in the ribs from a jaw injury? I think that’s a stretch, personally, but it is funny. I also like the notes from parents excusing their son or daughter from sports when they are sore from playing fall ball all weekend or ran into a light pole in the dark. My personal favorite parent note is when an athlete was excused from athletics due to a blister on his/her foot, which I definitely found humor in. If you have ever worked on the medical crew for the 3Day or Avon breast cancer walks then you have most likely seen blisters the size of Texas, and these individuals continue the walk. Which makes perfect sense on how a blister the size of a peanut would be a reason to not participate in athletics....
My main point is to at least find something to laugh at every day. There are so many things that can upset you and cause you to have a bad day but finding the humor in things will make those hard days a little easier. When you feel like your having a bad day just think of this true little story (which happened last Friday)… An athlete comes in to get an ice bag from the ice machine following practice. She comes out and says I have a question… So do you guys have like a lot of freezers here? I was wondering because that’s a lot of ice and they are all perfectly square and cubed… So do ya’ll like use ice trays and freeze them every day and then dump all the ice in the ice machine thing? Because that’s a lot of ice in there!
I later informed her that the ice machine makes ice on its own and we don’t use mini ice trays.
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