I’ve always found myself drawn to the medical field, this may be because I was always in the hospital. I was a pretty clumsy kid. In my adolescence, I would sport an injury nearly every week. I’ve gotten less injury prone as I’ve gotten older, but I’m still not without the occasional trip on a flat surface. In my lifetime, I have had two sprained wrists, 4 sprained ankles (3 on the left and one on the right), two broken wrists, two dislocated shoulders, one concussion, and an assortment of broken fingers and toes. Good thing I always had my love of western rugs to fall back on.
Let’s take a trip to 2009….So now we’re at my beloved elementary school, Minisink Valley. I loved this place, everything about it was great, the urinals that reached all the way down to the floor, the gigantic playground full of dangerous obstacles for barely four foot tall 9-year-olds, not to mention that one teacher who gave out lollipops every time we answered a question correctly. My elementary school truly was a gem like none other.
Anyway, It’s springtime, I’m at recess, my friends and I are running away from girls chasing us with barbies because well “coodies” were a very real and incurable ailment. The swings were always our base, if we got there we were basically immune. Out of nowhere a girl breaks from the pack and singles me out, so I make for the swings. I’m running as fast as my legs can sprint, wind rushing through my buzz cut (my parents didn’t believe in paying for haircuts so they just gave me buzz cuts themselves…it was awful), and BAM I made it. The girl leaves obviously defeated as she knows my newly gained immunity. I’m pretty tired at this point after my 25-yard sprint so I plop down on the swings, and I swing.
Five minutes pass and the teacher calls us in, the only problem is I’m still swinging, and with no indication of slowing down; gravity has taken over at this point and I have absolutely no control. I start brainstorming and come up with a solution. “I’ll just jump”, yeah I’ll jump! Won’t be too hard, and if I do it all my friends will think it’s super cool! So I jump…. well more like fell really fast. I didn’t take into account that there isn’t really a stable surface to jump from when your swinging at a velocity of 90 mph. It all happened very quickly, but I remember standing up, looking at my wrist and thinking “that doesn’t look right”, I immediately go to my teacher, she screams, this is not the response I was looking for.
I eventually end up in the nurse’s office whom also doesn’t present me with the reaction I wanted. As soon as I showed her my hand she cringes and tells me to sit down, at which time she calls my mother. I can go on and on about all of the adults from this point forward who saw my broken, swollen, oddly shaped wrist, but it would be a waste of time. EVERY adult that saw my injury comforted me by cringing and mouthing “oooooooooffff”. So yeah, not a great experience. To my surprise, the only adult that didn’t give this type of reaction was Dr. Trap. He just observed my wrist and moved my arm in positions so that he could better see the injury, there were no signs of dismay in his voice. As he talked to me he kept it light and made this seem like a normal occurrence (which I’m sure it was for him). This gave me comfort, and I relaxed. He eventually gave me some anesthesia and set the wrist back in place, as well as put a hard cast onto my newly normalized arm.
The way Dr. Trap handled my injury amazed me, and I consider it to be a major factor in my decision to go into the medical field. I plan on working in pediatrics and helping kids as injury prone to myself. I’m excited about what the future may hold, and I hope I can touch the life of somebody like myself and inspire them to dedicate their life to also helping the clumsy people of this world.