Jules breaks his arm

It was a normal Saturday nipper board training session.  Jules was a little tired and didn't want to do water safety because we had the Wakes-Millers coming round that evening but he decided the water would do him good.  The surf had been quite erratic recently with some lovely big sets - Tom had had some great surfing sessions.  Jules was out the back on a rescue board being used as a "can" which the nippers were paddling round.  He suddenly saw a very large set wave coming towards them and yelled to the nippers closest to him to paddle as fast as possible.  Because he was surrounded by nippers he was unable to paddle towards the wave to get over it safely and the wave broke on top of him.  Jules could feel the board being thrown around in the water and he lost his grip with his left hand leaving just his right hand on the handle.  He knew if he let go of the board it could hit one of the nippers causing serious injury and so he held on for dear life with his right hand.  Once the wave had cleared and he was able to come up for air he realised that his right arm was very painful and he thought he might have strained a ligament.  He paddled into shore, his arm hurting more with each stroke, had a shower and then, looking at his arm, realised something wasn't quite right so he drove himself to hospital.  He was very lucky that the wife of one his fellow patrol members was on duty at the hospital and she raced him through emergency.  30 minutes after he arrived he was shown this fabulous x-ray!  

The orthopaedic surgeon on duty finished his 16 hour operation at 10pm and wisely decided that he needed to sleep before carrying out any more surgery so I was able to pick Jules up at 10.30pm so that he could have a comfortable nights sleep before heading back to hospital the next day to have a plate and a couple of screws inserted into his arm.  Coincidentally the orthopaedic surgeon was the same one who operated on Tom's broken arm several years ago!  

Jules was discharged from hospital on Sunday evening with his arm simply bandaged - apparently the plate and screws provide enough support.  He worked from home on Monday but went in Tuesday to Thursday.  I'm not sure that's what the doctor had in mind! 

Tom had his school swimming carnival during the week and did exceptionally well getting a ribbon (i.e. coming in the top 4) for all 8 events that he participated in.  

 Breast stroke

 Butterfly

 L to R: Nate, Thomaz, Jake, Hunter, Jake, Levi, Tom, Connor