In the summer between seventh and eigth grade, I broke my arm, and I believe it has changed my life. I broke it when I was
rollerblading on my court. Or at least you can call it rollerblading, I consider it mere shuffling on wheels. Anyway, I went to turn going really slow, hit a twig and landed on my left arm, and it
snapped right in two. It didn't hurt until I looked at it, and then I let out a
bloodcurdling scream worthy of any
horror movie. I stayed in a
cast for four months, and had to get a plate screwed to my
radius (the forearm bone connected to the thumb part) that left a nasty ugly
scar.
I went on my
rollerblades because a
tire on my
bike was flat. If I had just went inside and forgotten about it, it wouldn't have happened. My very
best friends
birthday party was that day, and if I had gone in and showered and went to her
party instead of the
emergency room, maybe we wouldn't have drifted apart and I might even be
popular if it hadn't happened.
My
saw-bones (I hesitate to call the man a
doctor, the way he
butchered my arm) in the
emergency room of a
second-rate hospital must have just come from
SouthEast Asia the week before, because his grip on
english was horrid. I had no idea what he was talking about, he just stuck me with five
needles, three in my arm and one in each
thigh, and trapped my thumb in some odd
chinese finger trap torture device and hung weights from my upper arm to straighten my unnatural bend. Then, when the radius wouldn't set, he managed to garble out that I'd need
surgery, but don't worry since it would only be a small pin inserted in the marrow and a two inch well-healed
scar.
It didn't sound too bad, and they sent me to surgery. I chose the
gas instead of an
IV to knock me out, because
needles aren't my friends. The falling, spinning, rolling, queasy sensation I felt, with the
nurse by my side holding my hand. She said "it's ok, doing great, it's alright.." and it echoed in my ears as my mind
plummeted down a
bottomless pit. I had reccurring
nightmares about it for months afterwards.
When I woke up, I had a brand new
purple cast. It hurt, but it was supposed to. And a few weeks later I went to my
saw-bones' office to remove the cast and the
stiches. When they finished with the
buzz saw/
vaccum cleaner and opened up the smelly purple cast, I saw the most
hideous,
discolored,
Frankenstein-ish six inch
scar tearing across my puny, pale arm. It was awful, and I cried. Then they had to remove the
staples. Not
stitches,
staples. And that felt like fourteen
bee stings. Not too bad.
What happened after isn't pretty at all. The stitches they used to hold together the
muscle covering my
brand-new four inch
stainless steel monstrosity in my arm started rising to the surface of my skin. They just worked out and I had to pick them off, and they left little holes. And my scar
stretched. It wasn't finished healing, so now one end of it is all bumpy and wide, and the other is hardly noticeable. Thank you, Dr. Saw-Bones.
Now I cross my arms so that my right overlaps my left. Everyone else crosses them the other way.
It's not all bad, though. Even if it doesn't pick up
radio stations or set off the
airport metal detector, I can tell the
weather sometimes and make up really
cool stories about my scar. This one expirience has changed me a little in a hundred different ways, and it all could have been different if I just went inside.