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. |
