When I was little all I wanted in life was to break a bone. Any bone would suffice, but preferably an ankle, foot, or leg. Casts were awesome and crutches were even more awesome. Having an injury like that meant two things: 1) you were a bad ass and, 2) you were guaranteed instant celebrity status as kids who weren't even your friends would stand in line just to sign your cast (including the girl who made fun of you for winning the spelling bee 3 years in a row). Being injured also secured you a solid 4-6 week long pass from gym class which, as an asthmatic kid, was my version of winning the lottery.
To this day I'm shocked that I made it to the age of 14 without seriously injuring myself. It may have something to do with the fact that my interests involved playing the piano, reading, playing with Breyer Horses, and making friendship bracelets. That's not to say that I never hurt myself along the way. I'm horribly uncoordinated and I was forever tripping over things, or simply making poor life decisions. Like the time I tried to do a flying dismount off of my Schwinn bike and ended up sliding down the road on my face/two front teeth. What ensued was an epic fail on my part- an emergency dentist appointment. Emergency room? AWESOME! Emergency dentist appointment? LAME! Cast and/or crutches? AWESOME! Two front black teeth? The opposite of anything remotely awesome.
By the time I finally broke a "real bone" worthy of a trip to the emergency room, I was apparently cosmically overdue for an accident and my greatest desire was realized with a full arm and leg cast on opposite sides of my body. When I was 14 I started riding the most retarded horse of all time, a race track reject by the name of Plum. Plum had a lot of fun teaching me the art of the emergency dismounts as he would casually eject me from the saddle anytime he felt like it (which was pretty much anytime I rode him). One day Plum decided that he was no longer interested in participating in team sports and he bucked me off, leaving me for dead. I remember seeing the ground coming at me fast, along with an alarming cluster of quarry rocks.
When I opened my eyes, my mom was standing over me and I kept saying, "Knee, elbow. Knee, elbow. Knee, elbow," despite the fact that I wasn't even registering any pain. My mom asked me if I wanted her to stay with me or if I wanted her to try and catch Plum. I said, "Stay with me," and she promptly left to go find the horse. When my mom returned she announced that I had 1 of 2 options: I could get back on the horse or I could go to the emergency room. I'm not sure why, but all of a sudden, I had no desire to go to the emergency room. My mom, who isn't very motherly, finally got tired of trying to argue with my 14-year old concussive self and took matters into her own hands: she tried to force me to get back on the horse. We ended up in the emergency room.
I'll fast forward through the details- but I broke my elbow and it required surgery the next day. SCORE! I was a bad ass! (Take that, friendship bracelet making induced carpal tunnel syndrome!) When my mom asked the Doctor to also take a look at my knee, I brushed it off and assured them I was fine, despite the trail of blood that was running down my leg. The next day I woke up and realized that perhaps I was wrong, as my knee had apparently swallowed my leg. When the doctor finally saw it, she recoiled in horror and said something to the effect of, "Yeah that probably needed stitches." They removed 100 cc's of fluid from my knee during surgery and sent me off for an MRI.
At this point it had been about 24 hours since I had eaten anything and the male nurse must have taken pity on me. He gave me some of his McDonald's french fries, although his attentiveness may be attributed to the fact that he was responsible for injecting daily antibiotic shots into my butt. Anyway, anesthesia and french fries do not mix well. If you've never had the pleasure of vomiting on yourself while encapsulated in an MRI tube, you should be so lucky. It turned out that in addition to my concussion, broken elbow, and possible tetanus, I had also dislocated my opposite knee.
About two days into my recovery, my mom was apparently fed up with taking care of my basic needs and she announced that she was done babying me. I think the final straw was when I asked her to re-tie one of my shoes because she had tied it too tight and it was cutting off my circulation. With no one willing to help me and since I only had one functioning extremity per side, showering became a complicated web of duct tape and trash bags in order to keep the casts dry. Shaving was dangerous and getting out of the shower became an extreme game of slip-and-fall Russian roulette. I couldn't brush my hair or teeth, fasten my bra, put on socks, or tie my shoes. The end result wasn't so much a clean or even fully dressed version of me. I went to school every day for 3 months looking like a homeless person, which probably explains a lot about my social ineptitude and why I never had a date to a school dance.
The best part of all of this was that our house was one mile from my bus stop and my mom insisted that I make the trek/hobble every day to and from the bus stop. One day, as I descended the bus stairs one leg at a time, my toe caught on the stair and I tripped and fell down the stairs and landed in the middle of the highway. My leg was at a weird angle and I realized that I had actually bent the metal rod in my leg brace. As I lay there like a turtle weighed down by my casts and an oversized LL Bean backpack, waiting for Larry the bus driver to pick me up, I came to the conclusion that I was anything but a bad ass and that maybe, emergency dentist appointments weren't half bad.
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