Two-of-a-Kind Tuesday (7/23/19)
The two worst injuries I’ve ever had
Before I write this, I’m worried that this is going to be a serious jinx. I’ve been having these daymares (nightmares during the day) about tearing my ACL. I’m not sure why these are occurring, but I’m concerned it’s a That’s So Raven-like vision and now, by writing a blog about two very lame injuries, I feel like I’m tempting fate even more. Anyway, here we go:
This blog is one of the more personal ones, not personal in an intense or intimate way, just personal in that it is about two moments in my life. I’ll start with the one that isn’t technically injury:
Pink Eye
Yes, lame, I know. Let me explain. For this one you actually get a perfect timeline of me realizing I have it. Almost exactly four years ago, on July 31st, 2015, I took this picture because my eyes felt funny.
Looks suspicious right? I just assumed I was really tired, not ridden with a tragic eye infection. I wake up and…
Boom. Pink eye. Conjunctivitis. I’m very brave to be sharing these pictures of myself and I hope they’ll be greeted with kindness, but, believe me, I get how funny this looks. I had been working at a camp and I guess one of those brats infected me. The timing couldn’t have been any worse — we were leaving for a long-anticipated vacation to California in a few days.
But whatever, Pink Eye can usually be cured with antibiotic eye drops and I picked some up from the doctor before we flew out. This is where it went from bad to worse. Usually it goes away and you’re not contagious in about a week, but this batch stuck around, and got worse. It infected both eyes, went from bacterial pink eye to viral (much more contagious), and I had to go an emergency clinic in Yosemite because I was nearly blind. I get home from Cali and still no solution. I’m getting medicine, antibiotics, eye drops — nothing is helping.
A few days after I’m home I get pulled over while driving with my friend Cameron (shoutout Cam) to get pizza. Don’t get it twisted — I got pulled over because the registration on the car expired at the end of July and we hadn’t replaced the sticker for August — not because I did anything wrong. Despite this pretty mundane stop, the police officer was really aggressive, demanding both of our licenses and asking up to open up the glove compartment and center console so he could look in there. It wasn’t until afterwards, thanks to my mom’s lovely text shown below, that I realized the officer may have been a little suspicious of the two blood-red eyes I was sporting.
Anyway, it turned out my eyeball had been scratched by something, which was the cause of the long-term infection, and it took another few weeks for it to finally be resolved. I know it’s lame and not technically an injury, but I was suffering.
Broken Wrist
This one is a bit more of an injury and a much more embarrassing story. It was a weekday in the spring of 2014 just like any other — get home, eat, pretend to do homework, and then go play basketball up the street with some friends. During a break in the action and with the urge to prove I can dunk, I utter my famous last words — “Watch this.” Towards the hoop I sprint (not even with a ball in my hand), I elevate, reach both hands out, grab the rim, my momentum swings me so that I’m parallel to the ground, and I let go. I fell ten feet and used my left hand to brace my fall, fracturing it in the process.
In that moment I had no idea it was broken. I had never broken a bone before. My “friends” start cracking up, dying with laughter as I sit and watch my wrist swell up. There were also a ton of middle-aged women there (for a soccer practice on the field) who watched me fall and didn’t do anything. I don’t blame my friends for laughing, but I still am annoyed with those soccer moms for not doing anything to help.
So I stumble home with a puffy wrist, head to the emergency room and, yeah, they say it’s a fractured wrist. I’m a two weeks away from going to prom and looks like I’m wearing a cast for the pictures.
While, yes, that did happen, it paled in comparison to walking into school the Monday after the injury. The last words my friends had said to me were, “I swear if you show up Monday with a cast I’m going to lose it,” and when I sat down at that lunch table with big puffy cast, they sure lost it.
That’s it. Follow me on Twitter if you feel like it. Peace.
