Throughout my life I have had multiple health problems that have needed attention. I was born with a rare heart condition that required me to have open heart surgery at 11 months old. Without this surgery I would have only lived to be five years old. Being at the doctor’s office is something that most kids are scared of because of getting shots, but for me I was terrified of having to have another surgery. Even though I was too young to remember my surgery, all of the appointments I had to go through made me terrified of needing another one. I dealt with severe anxiety about doctors my whole life, but it started to get better in sixth grade, because that’s when I was finally cleared. My heart wasn’t fully cleared until I was twelve years old and I finally felt like I could do anything. I didn’t have all the restrictions anymore like, not being able to go in hot tubs, go on certain kinds of roller coasters, or play certain sports. I finally felt like I was free to live my life and do things that other kids got to do. Flashforward seven years and my perception totally changed.
Two years ago, one of my best friends’ families invited me to go to Destin, Florida with them for spring break. I was so excited, because I’d never been on a vacation without my family before. I’ve known her and her family since I was four so I wasn’t nervous about traveling with them at all. We drove from Franklin, WI to Destin, FL, which is a 16 hour drive. We started our trek down to Florida and were already having so much fun. The time passed surprisingly quickly as her dad made jokes about random signs and played carpool karaoke.
When we finally made it to our destination we spent time at the beach and soaked up the sun that hadn’t even made an appearance in Wisconsin yet. I had so much fun getting to experience new things, like swimming in the ocean and going to a restaurant called Fudpuckers where you get to feed alligators. On April 7th, my vacation went from amazing to terrifying with
one simple movement. My friend’s brother was trying to show me a Tik Tok as we were waiting for his mom to be ready to go play mini golf and as I moved over on the couch to see it, I fully dislocated my left knee cap. At first, I didn’t feel any pain. It was almost like the room went silent as I stared at my knee internally panicking as I realized I couldn’t move my leg. He was looking at me waiting for me to grab the phone when I finally announced that I couldn’t move my leg and that it was stuck. My friend went to go get her mom, who’s a nurse, and that’s when the seconds started to feel like minutes.
When she arrived, she instantly was able to tell that my knee was dislocated and called one of our friends’ dads who is an orthopedic surgeon for advice. He said “If she can get to the car just take her to the ER, but if it won’t be easy for her to get there just call 9-1-1.” There were 35 stairs I would’ve needed to crawl down in order to get to the minivan, and that doesn’t even account for the ride to the hospital, which happened to be down the street from our rental condo. We called 9-1-1 and that’s when the pain started. It felt like having 100 charlie horses all at once up and down my entire leg. I had to hold my body up with my arms and one leg since putting any pressure on my left leg was excruciatingly painful. It felt like hours waiting for the ambulance to make it to me. When I was finally able to hear the sirens I got excited, because that meant that they were close. I kept thinking to myself that they would be there any second, but the sirens eventually stopped moving. The ambulance wasn’t coming and then I started to panic again. Not only was my leg starting to move by itself from my muscles tensing up but I was also scared because I didn’t know what they were going to do to help me. When the paramedics got to me, they were trying to calm me down, but nothing was working. They gave me some medication that made me black out for a minute.
I remember waking up on the ground, dazed and confused, to my friend’s mom telling me to open my eyes. I thought I was waking up from a dream, but in reality I was waking up to a nightmare. I went to the hospital where I was given a straight leg brace and crutches. The last day of vacation was spent inside while my friends were at the beach in the sun and I was
watching Friends.
The day after that we left early in the morning to start our trip back home. I’ve never been so ready to go home. Driving 16 hours home without being able to bend your leg was a struggle. We propped my leg up on suitcases and towels, but even with that my leg was still falling asleep and hurting. When we finally made it home I was dreading my appointment with the orthopedic surgeon, because the thought of surgery terrified me. My doctor told me that he wanted me to do six weeks of physical therapy and access from there. I worked so hard to not have to have surgery doing my exercises every day and icing my knee all the time to ensure that surgery wouldn’t be needed. At my last physical therapy appointment, my therapist told me that I was his quickest healing patient with this sort of injury so I assumed that the road to recovery was over, but boy was I wrong. The next day at my follow-up appointment, my doctor came in, took one look at my x-rays and said “When can we schedule your surgery?” My heart sank and all I could hear from there was the teacher from Charlie Brown and my heart beating a mile a minute.
I had surgery on May 28th, and I was terrified but I had done it, so I thought the hard part was over. But re-learning how to do everything was so frustrating and humiliating. Seeing everyone else be able to do things that you used to be able to do was so discouraging. I had to relearn how to bend my leg, walk, get out of bed, and simply stand. That’s just the physical part of working through an injury. The mental block is so much harder to conquer. Learning to trust your leg and that it won’t just give out as you stand or walk is so scary. But slowly as you start to see progress it gets easier. Then once you finally start to trust yourself something gets thrown at you, like walking in the snow and everything being slippery or having to go up and down stairs. To this day I’m still not 100%. There’s still things I can’t do. I can’t run or jump yet. I’m still learning how to do those things. But, the biggest thing that this experience has taught me is that nothing is too hard for me to handle. I’ve had so many things I’ve had to work through throughout my life, but with each step you learn and grow in some way. No matter how hard it is, something good can always come from something that is challenging.
