The Beach and I

The beach and I have a love/hate relationship. Not just any beach, Huntington Beach. I am not sure what to make of it because I love going to the beach, it is beautiful, I love the sound of the beach, I have fun when I am there. First, in January I went to this beach and broke my fingers. Then on Memorial day we went to that beach, the night before I had a lot of weird dreams that something bad was going to happen. I figured it was all in my head because of my first accident and this beach. We got there and started having fun, then I got hit in the face really hard with a beach ball, I thought I broke my nose but I was fine. Stephanie-1, Beach-1. My beach yips are over. No beach can one up me. I am back in the game, or so I thought.

A month ago our friends Brandon and Melissa were in town and we were taking them to Newport Beach. We weren't able to find parking there and Huntington Beach is just down the road so we ended up there and I didn't think twice about it. It was my first time swimming in the ocean and I was super excited. We took pictures then we jumped in the ocean and swam and jumped over the waves coming in. It was a lot of fun except for the salt water. The waves were really pushing us around and it was wearing me out. We had only been swimming for maybe 10 minutes when I took a break for a while then jumped back in.

The first wave that came in after my break was HUGE! I mean huge, taller than anything, and massive. We all jumped and here is what I remember happening. I think I jumped to early and the wave pushed me into the water where it spun me around into a somersault and slammed the back of my head against the bottom of the ocean while pushing gallon after gallon of water up my face. I didn't loose consciousness or anything so I knew I was fine, but I was cooked. I rose out of the water and announced that I was done. Lars took one look at me and said get out of the water now, you are bleeding. I had blood running down from the top of my head to my chin. I didn't feel anything except for my mouth and nose swelling up like I had just gone to the dentist and got punched in the face. Lars checked to see if my nose was broken and it was still straight. We then walked to the showers and I rinsed off to see if there was anymore damage. The blood was all coming from my nose, how it spread around my face and head is beyond me.

Then we walked to the life guard tower to get checked out. They looked at my face and said this, "I don't know how your face looked before, but you look fine to me." Then I told them my neck hurt and that's when they panicked. They asked me a bunch of questions and had someone look at my neck and move it around then offered to take me to the hospital. I was fine considering I had just got done walking around after the accident, so I declined. They gave me some ice and we went back to our towels and just relaxed. I was bummed I got hurt again during all the fun. A while later some dolphins swam by, it was so cool. Man I love the beach, but it doesn't seem to love me. Before we left for home I put my feet into the water just to warn the ocean that I would be back.

We actually had plans to go back to that beach the next week but we cancelled. I will go back but not for a few weeks.

I was feeling fine, just sore, swollen, and tired. But my face looked fine. This was a Saturday, by the middle of church on Sunday I looked like this:

My top underlip and inside of my nose was completely bruised and scrapped up. My teeth hurt so bad like I had braces and surgery at the same time. I looked like a battered wife from a Lifetime movie. Poor Lars got a lot of crap for it too. My neck was sore and it hurt to turn my head, thankfully that went away after a week. It hurt to breath, eat, and talk, three very important things. Luckily I had some pain pills left over from when my fingers broke so that helped a lot. But for the next two weeks I was on a liquid diet and had a lot of pain. At the time I thought it was the worst pain ever. But now that I am healed and can breath and move my nose again it feels like nothing. I guess I am stronger now because of it. It still sucked at the time, but I am grateful that nothing worse happened to me. Every now and again I replay back in my mind the accident happening and think about how I could have and maybe should have been hurt a lot worse, like make a broken neck or cracked ribs or something. But I didn't get hurt. God does have Angels look after me. And for that I am so thankful.

No worries anymore because my beautiful face is back and here to stay, at least until our next beach adventure.