Lesson Learned : The Moment That I Felt Pain

I was excited for a new beginning in my career, maybe to prepare me for high school in the upcoming years. The idea of beating boys in soccer got me excited, my blood pumping harder through my veins and put an extra spring in my step. It was the first practice of our middle school season, where my life would be turned upside down. I ran down the field as normal, going for another shot on goal, but out of nowhere one of boys came from behind and completely took out my knee, causing me to collapse in pain. Lying down on the field, my sanctuary, the place I saw as home was probably the most grueling time of my life. Injuries were common in my life, but this injury was unlike any other. I could not get up off the field and felt as if there was nothing left in my knee, and every time I tried to get up, I fell right back down. I never sat out a practice until that night and figured one day would be enough. One night was clearly not enough, I was never able to catch back up to my full speed, or be able to cut around the field, which resulted in moving positions from forward, to defense to cut back on the running. I thought this would a temporary position, but I played every game in

Bruises, messy hair, bloody knees, dirt stained socks, anxious parents critiquing from the stands and intense coaches pushing you to work harder; growing up I played competitive softball, I competed around the country dreaming of being recruited. Church, friends, family, even school were a second priority for me. As junior year approached, I was injured and forced to have an atypical surgery. I tore my rotator cuff and labrum completely and damaged almost every other muscle in my arm. Injuries are defined as harm that causes someone to not be fully

By this time I would be on the track getting my workout in to run the 300 hurdles. I was solid in that event, but the events I took the most pride in was the 400 and the 4 by 4. It had been a rough ending to basketball season but this would be the major turning point for me. I could make it all up by going to state. My track coach knew my coach from middle school so she has heard quite a bit about me. I never really had training or anything I just ran at first. I started to do summer training and ran with a local track team. Coach George wanted me to run the 200. It was new to me so we trained in the mornings before school. She bought in the assistant coach and he had me and few more girls lined up on the track. He wanted us to stand side by side and sprint out and merge into lane one. It was kind of crazy because we were all kind of jumbled up together. The first time as I merged into lane one my legs tripped another girl and she fell so I felt bad. So the third time I tried to make sure I didn't trip anyone up because my legs were so long. I dodge tripping the same girl but I almost hit another. By the fourth time I was really just over it, I jerked my body one way and my hip went the other. I ended up limping to the finish line. I thought it was just a little kink and I could just pop it out. I was completely wrong. It was way worse than the ankle injury. I guess it was a sign from good telling me to

It was May 23th, 2015, two days before Memorial Day. This weekend was also the Pacesetter Soccer Invitational. It was the 1st game we had played in the tournament and I was going in for a tackle. I put my right foot in front of the ball to get it, and the girl kept going. She knocked me over because she was a lot taller than me (surprise). I hit the ground so hard. She kept dribbling, but I knew I could not give up. I got back I could not catch up with her because there was a shooting pain in my back.

I was thirteen, and I had just come home from a school softball game. My friend Dalton had invited my sister and I to come and swim at the neighborhood pond. My sister stayed home, but I got permission to go. After a while of swimming, Dalton looks at me claims that he’ll jump out of a tree near the bank if I jump out. Of course, I accepted my friend’s little dare and climbed into the tree, focusing on the seven-foot-deep drop-off off of the bank. Regrettably, I didn’t jump far enough. My right leg landed in the drop-off, but my left leg hit the clay, which caused all of my weight to shift to my left foot. I felt an immense pain in my ankle and started screaming while crawling over to the bank as Dalton ran to get my mom. After I finally made it to the emergency room, I found that I had broken my fibula at an upward slant, which caused the upper part of the bone to slam down into my ankle.I had completely blown out every ligament and tendon on the left side of my ankle. I had to have a plate and four screws implanted into my fibula along with the surgical repair of all of my ligaments and tendons. The entire ordeal left me extremely interested in the human body, and this interest was heightened when I had to get my appendix removed a few months later and again when I took Anatomy and

9th grade I fractured my lateral condyle of the femoral head, leaving me with 2 months of physical therapy. At first I hated it never wanting to go, saying my trainer was too young to even know what he was doing. However, when my trainer, Adam, started to make it a game with me on how fast I can progress my competitive side came to play and i couldn't help but want to take him up on his offer. As the weeks passed by I started loving the atmosphere watching patients work towards

Halfway through my freshman year in high school, I suffered a serious cheerleading injury. My team was anxiously getting ready for our first competition of the season. As a flyer, I was dropped from a stunt the night before competition. I was rushed to the hospital where I was diagnosed with a type three concussion and a severe neck injury. The next few months I wore a neck brace and had to deal with a tremendous amount of pain and confusion. Some of my symptoms included amnesia, migraines, dizziness, depression, irritability, anxiety, insomnia, and neck pain. After about six months, most of my symptoms had subsided and I worked to regain my strength and athletic ability. My recovery came just in time to start the next year’s cheer season.

I was practicing at my competitive cheerleading gym, when my life was unexpectedly turned upside down. While performing a back walkover back handspring, there was a loud “pop” as I hyperextended my right elbow, tearing both my muscle and my ulnar collateral ligament. I promptly sunk to my knees and began sobbing. The next thing I knew, I was laboriously working through physical therapy at NASA Bone & Joint Specialist instead of relaxing at the beach. This unexpected injury would manifest to be a significant

In my accident, I ended up pulling various muscles in my neck, back, and right shoulder. This caused me to go through about five months of physical therapy. As sophomore year rolled around, I had just completed therapy, and I was almost cleared to do cheer activities. As my therapy was coming to an end, I realized

It is time to speak about my injury that happened about two years ago. A lot of people nowadays ask me almost every day “Deshaun why don’t you play football for the M state Fergus Falls Spartans? “ and I tell them I didn’t get all of my football equipment in time, so the coach didn’t let me play, but in reality, I can’t play because I have a very bad back injury. So now for the people that are curious about what happened to my back here is my story from the beginning to the end.

“When your body is hurt, speak up and communicate with a coach, friend, anyone. You only get one body in life, and you need to honor and respect it.” Gabby Taylor, a young 15 year old girl said this quote, after she got injured and her life changed forever. Gabby was the co-captain for her cheer team and during the last day of practice before her competition the next day, Gabby’s right arm was now paralyzed, her nerves were now damaged, and her immune system ended up shutting down. This all happened from one very difficult stunt in cheer practice that needed to be perfect. While Gabby and her stunt group were trying this stunt for the first time, Gabby felt a strange pain go through her neck and shoulder. She ignored the pain and helped throw

I had been drifting in and out of consciousness, unable to deal with the throbbing in my throwing shoulder. My coach, with the sweet taste of victory almost immediately gone, was barking questions to me. Where does it hurt in your shoulder, can you move your fingers, can you raise your arm. The coaches eventually determined it would be best to cart me off the field, not knowing what exactly happened to me. Turns out I had dislocated my shoulder and severely sprained my deltoids. But the harshest pain I felt after the initial shock, was hobbling over to the car. I glanced up one more time, to see the clouds covering the once glorious sun, and the leaves still dancing in the wind, as if they were laughing at me. I got in the car

When I was in eighth grade I sprained my right ankle over spring break.I was at my grandma’s celebrating Easter and was playing with my cousins. I ran to grab a ball that had been kicked out of the area we were playing in and as I was running, my foot got caught in a hole and I tripped and fell. I tried to get up, but as soon as I put weight on my ankle, I fell back down. My cousin,Payton, and my younger sister, Tosha, had to help me get on our fourwheeler and drive me back to my grandma’s. They helped me get into the house and onto the couch. Then my dad and my grandma had me put ice packs on my ankle and had me try to stand on

The crowd was roaring like wild animals. Our teams had switched sides to start the second match and everything came into focus then. I could hear individual people cheering in the crowd, the student section was going nuts. The smell of the butter coming from the popcorn at the concession stands suddenly stood out to me. Most importantly, I could feel the yearning and the passion coming from my teammates. We wanted this win–bad. I was one of the leading hitters on the team and it was my job to produce the big hits for the team and motivate them to take everything the other team would hit at us. We started the second game and things were still going well for us! It wasn’t a fluke! We were playing well because we were working hard. If we didn’t hit hard they were going to pound it down, we couldn’t let up. So when our setter set me up and I saw out of the corner of my eye a triple block I knew I had to get it through their hands, but the ball was behind my head. In that split second I made a decision that changed my life forever. I swung away and I felt my shoulder pop and then the worst pain of my life went through my entire arm. I grabbed it right away knowing something was wrong. I’ve never felt pain like this in a game before. In that moment I knew that was the one. Every player knows what it’s like to get hurt. You get sprained ankles and sprained knees all the time, but this was the injury I knew had been coming to me. I looked up at my parents in the crowd and they knew too. Something was wrong.

It was rival night: West Delaware against Independence. My brother, Dallyn, was in the midst of his senior football season and they were ahead in the third quarter. Dallyn was running for the touchdown when he was brought down with terrible knee pain. His ACL and Meniscus were torn. Dallyn would now be out for the rest of his senior football season and would not be able to step back on the wrestling mat for his last year as a West Delaware Wrestler. The doctors and physical therapists asked him if he knew that inflexible muscles and tendons could have a direct correlation with tearing or straining them. From then on Dallyn worked to improve flexibility in his life.