It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt!

And that's true! Friday night Kurt and I went sledding with his former mission companion, Adam, and his wife Melissa. We were really excited to go sledding because Kurt and I had gone Wednesday night and had a blast. I took my camera, but decided I would take pictures at the end of night. For reasons you will learn shortly, there were no pictures taken that night.

We headed over to Provo's Rock Canyon park, a well known sledding spot. When Kurt and I were there on Wednesday night, the snow had just fallen and was still mostly powdery. Friday night was different, though--it hadn't snowed a significant amount since Wednesday and a significant amount of sledding had taken place in the last 2 days. The snow was packed down, hard, and icy.

Rocky Canyon park has a bowl-like shape. From the middle of the park steep hills rise on all sides. This is why it's such a sledding hot spot. It's lit at night, though not terribly well. Not well enough.

After a few runs each in one spot, we migrated across the hill to another. Kurt was the first to go down in this new spot. He sat on the toboggan, pushed himself off with his hands, and went flying down the hill. A little over halfway down he suddenly hit an unforeseen jump someone had created and went flying 5 or 6 feet in the air. He came crashing down on his butt/lower back and laid still for a few minutes. At first when we called down to see if he was ok, he said he was. After a few minutes, he didn't get up though and I ran down the hill as fast as I could.

To make a long story short, Kurt could walk but he was in an incredible amount of pain. I took him to the ER and our friends went home. We spent about 2 1/2 hours in the hospital, wondering if he had broken his back or done worse injury. I called my parents, his mom, and his best friend James (whom I asked to come give Kurt a blessing as soon as he could). Kurt was in a lot of pain and the morphine they gave him in the iv didn't help much. But after a cat scan and a lot more waiting, we were told there was no bone damage. He had not broken his back. I was able to take him home, where James and a friend of his met us to give Kurt a blessing. After they left I went to the pharmacy for the prescribed pain pills and muscle relaxer. Kurt slept pretty well and the loratab is working, though he's still in an pretty good deal of pain.

So there was only soft tissue damage, but they couldn't ascertain how much at the hospital. They referred Kurt off-site to a specialist in Orem, who will be able to tell Kurt how much damage there was and whether it was only muscles or if it included ligaments and cartilage too. I'm just thankful he didn't break his back or damage his spinal cord.

Anyways. Just thought I'd let everyone know. Oh, and never go sledding at Rock Canyon Park (when we left the hospital there was one guy there with a concussion and another with a broken arm--both from sledding at Rock Canyon Park).