Everyone has broken something, for me it has always been electronics and fractured arms. By the time I was ten years old I had broken each arm once, and by thirteen I had broken each arm twice. Most of my injuries were somehow related to roller blading. You would think that after the first time I would give up, but no. See, I had a friend who would always coax me back on to my skates.
To really get a picture of her you must know three things. 1. Her name is Blaise Love. 2. She totally fits her name, and 3. The first time we met she was climbing up the wall of her house. As you may or may not have guessed by these three things, she rarely takes no for an answer.
Anyway back to broken bones. The first time I broke my arm was at my friend Makeda’s birthday party. I was super excited because it was my first time at a roller skating rink. We had been skating around to some great 90’s jams when I started to get thirsty. Now I don’t know if you’ve all been to a skating rink, but the area where food is held has tiles, one after another in little even rows. I made it over to my mom just fine, and grabbed a cup of Sprite; it wasn’t until I was almost off of the tiles that one of my wheels got stuck. I was falling in what seemed like slow motion. All too fast I hit the ground. Pain radiated up my arm, so like any kid would do when there was shock and pain, I started wailing. Mom rushed over and placed me on one of the tables. After determining it was not an easy fix, she rushed me to the ER.
Now I know everyone says they hate the emergency room, but I will repeat it. The emergency room sucks. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the doctors and nurses who work there, I do, but you end up spending three hours there waiting to see a doctor, and then most of the time they end up sending you somewhere else completely. As I see it it is a waste of time.
But that is not where I was headed with this. After waiting for what seemed like forever, the doctors brought me back behind the swinging doors and took an x-ray of my arm. After another half hour, it was certain, I had broken my arm. I was put in a cast and sent on my way with the instructions to not get the cast wet.
As the number of times I fractured my bones increased, the horrible annoyance of putting plastic bags around my arm got easier, and not just due to getting used to it. By the last fracture, they had come out with a new technology, waterproof casts! It was a giant leap for mankind, well kid kind at least.
Between my first and my last “incident” I had broken my arm twice. Once where I had essentially done the same thing as my first time, and got my wheel stuck on a tile. The second I was trying to show off by walking over a creek on a slippery wet pipe needless to say the guys I was trying to impress just freaked out instead. Neither time was I thinking through the consequences, but it really wasn’t until my last time that I realized just how idiotic I could be.
Do you remember the friend I mentioned earlier? Blaise? Well yeah, she and I were skating around our neighborhood and having fun when I saw a basketball. It is important to realize that at 5 foot 3, I am not really a big basketball star. However, when I was on my roller skates I was at least two inches taller, and made me believe I could do anything. I jumped up to throw the basketball into a hoop, and my legs went flying. This being my fourth fractured arm, I had built up a tolerance to the pain, and I really wasn’t positive it wasn’t broken until I went to go to sleep.
At the time I had a bunk bed and loved to sleep on the top. That night as I was climbing up the ladder to the top bed pain started shooting through my arm. I loudly called out and my mother came in. By this point we had an orthopedist on speed dial and by the morning I was fixed up. Now after all of these times of breaking my arms I have learned many a thing about having a broken bone. There are both pros and cons.
Pro: You get all types of sympathy from people.
Con: After the first week people will start to bore of hearing about it.
Pro: You get a great story out of it.
Con: If you have a stupid story you will never live it down (ex. Roller skating and basketball.)
Pro: If you break your writing hand, people have to help you write which means extensions on pretty much all your work.
Con: It really only works for kids.
Pro: You have a canvas, which means doodling all the time for your friends.
Con: People can ruin your cast with stupid messages or doodles.
Pro: You have your own personal weapon, which you can use to keep all the obnoxious people far away from you by swinging the body part around.
Con: You could end up hurting yourself.
Con: It is excruciating pain at the beginning.
Pro: It gets better.
Con: You have to deal with having x-rays done which is never comfortable.
Pro: It is cool to be able to see your bones.
Con: It gets super itchy and the only way to scratch it is by banging the area with a spoon because (and you’re not supposed to do this) nothing will reach that far into your cast.
Pro: None. You are doomed.
Con: You have limited mobility.
Pro: You get to be lazy.
Con: Water is the enemy until you are healed.
Pro: They now have waterproof casts.
Con: When you get it off there is always the fear that the tool they use to take off your cast is going to accidentally slip and chop off your limb.
Pro: You are getting it off.
Featured Image Credit: thomaspetermueller via Flickr Creative Commons
