3rd Grade Torn Ligament
When I was 9 years old and in third grade I made a very painful mistake. You see I was used to climbing and jumping distances from doing so on our brick wall at Broken Lane, but that was only one story high, and this time I jumped from double that height.
It was recess during third grade and I believe we were playing tag and I was on the highest point on the playground equipment which was two stories high and required a ladder to reach. I ignored the ladder and jumped full force from the top of the playground equipment mistakenly landing on my left ankle at an angle to where it tore a ligament. It was the most pain I had been in that I was cognitive of, again there is no telling what my brother, mother, or grandfather did to me before I could form memories at age 3. Anyways I landed on the peewee gravel below and my friend Charlie at a later day told me he remembered how hard I cried when this happened. So someone called the teacher over and her first instruction was her telling me to stand up and walk, but I was in so much pain and shock I told her "I just need to lay here for a minute," because I was on the verge of vomiting. Eventually she made me get up and got another student to help me walk. The pain was excruciating and all the teacher did was say "you're fine, go to the nurse." They made me walk several blocks on a torn ligament.
When I got to the nurse's office her first thought was to remove my left shoe, and so she did as I screamed in pain. She looked at my left ankle closer and told me "it doesn't look broken," and she told me to put my shoe back on which I could barely manage from the pain. She noticed that I was crying and almost screaming taking the shoe off and putting it back on. That's when she said, "Well let me have another look." She removed my shoe again, repeating the pain that she inflicted earlier by her instructions.
Eventually they called my mom, but I had to go half of the remaining school day only able to move by hopping on my right leg, putting any weight on my left ankle was unbearable. When we had to go to lunch I hopped there in line with the other students when as we entered the cafeteria I became very nauseous again. I hopped as quickly as I could to the bathroom where I proceeded to vomit. Sometime in the afternoon my mother arrived where she picked me up and took me to the emergency room.
In the emergency room the first thing they had to do was take x-ray's. To do this the technician had to move my ankle in various positions because it was an overhead machine. Every single x-ray further drove the pain because of the bending and moving of the ankle. I cried the entire time, then when we were done I think I made the technician feel bad, because my hands were on the side of the bed when she moved it and it crushed my finger against the wall. Causing me to cry once more
My mother would ask me "Why were you crying after the x-rays were done, and I told her "she pinched my finger."