Swim meet & updated scar

Samuel had a swim meet today. He swam 3 JV events, 50 Free, 50 Fly (his favorite stroke), and the second leg of the 200 free relay. He was as always, happy to be part of the team on a sunny day (clickage on image, will embiggage):

This is his second length of his 50 free event:

He loves Fly. Here is is heading down the pool. He was looking pretty strong:

He's starting to fade, but a little encouragement and he picks it up.

And his dive for the leg of the free relay:

He was almost to the end:
As always he loves to swim and above everything else, he likes to be a part of the team. His team mates check in with him and encourage him. It's cool to see. I know he feels accepted.

I had promised to get a picture of his scar as it has aged over almost 15 years. I had a camera, he still has the scar and his shirt off... That's all you need:

If you look a couple of inches below the scar on his sternum, you'll see a smaller scar. This is from the drainage tube they put in his chest to drain off extra fluid immediately after surgery. They took it out a couple of days later and dropped a couple of stitches in to close it up. I assume that is fairly standard procedure and he'll likely get another.

What will be interesting about it all, is to see how big the new incision will be and where it will be. Will the incision be as long as his existing scar or will it be longer? Could it be shorter? Will the drainage tube be in the same place? When we meet with the surgeon, I'm not likely to care about this, but if we get past our initial questions and have time, I may ask anyway...

Mr. Smiley:Yes, he is that dark. He has my skin, as does his sister, and he gets much darker as the summer goes on...