The Moment That I Felt Pain

It was a normal spring night and my baseball game had just started. It was senior night and I was pitching, we had just finish the first half of the first inning. My teammate struck out, it was my turn to hit, I swung for the ball and my leg popped twice. I went down and didn't get back up, My leg was stuck to my chest and I couldn't move it. The visiting team's coach was an EMT he ran over and said ¨this is going to hurt¨ and pulled my leg straight. What had happened was when I swung the bat my leg didn't move and my kneecap dislocated and instead of my ligaments tearing, they stretched and broke my kneecap. This was a challenge for me because this was the first time I had never broken a bone in my life. I went to the doctor and he said nothing was wrong, so my

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

Growing up, I was a competitive cheerleader but was forced to quit three and a half years ago when I was struck with chronic back pain for the second time in my life. I was pain free for just over a year and a half, and during that time I was involved in cheerleading again. After the pain relapsed, I endured countless needles and numerous procedures. I was home bound and on bed rest for seven months during my junior year of high school, which is considered the most important and determinant year. I wasn’t able to go to school and sit at a desk all day, because the pain was too excruciating. Because of this, my teachers were reluctant to help and didn’t think I deserved to continue their classes with passing grades since I was not in class,

Last year, in October during the cheerleader’s concert, that my mom and dad were singing at, I asked, “Do you want to dance?” My mom said, “yes”. Walking out to dance, she fell and accidently tripped me and landed on my ankle. It felt as if someone was breaking my leg in half. It got really numb where I couldn’t feel it, but I still knew I was in some pain. Picking me up off the ground, my mom sat me on the bleachers. Everyone came over there and it was really embarrassing. My dad carried me to the car and we drove to the dollar store to buy me an icepack to put on it.

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

When Jacob, the best player of my football team when I was ten, got hurt, it turned out to be a ‘’blessing in disguise.’’ At the time I was ten and played for the Modesto Raiders. It was our third game of the season, and we were playing the Vikings on a warm, windy day. When Jacob got hurt, he was playing wide receiver and it was third down. He went out for a pass and as soon as he touched the ball, got hit so hard that I could hear it on the bench as soon as he touched the ball. He was still on the ground when the play was over and didn’t look like he was getting up anytime soon. Coach went over and helped him up. A few seconds later our offensive coordinator came up to me and said that I would be starting until he was able to play again.

As an athlete, I got hurt a lot. I had to play through many injuries; my knees, ankles, foot, wrist, fingers, and shoulders. All in all, there isn’t anything on my body that I haven’t injured. In fact, I’m writing this essay right now in a sling because I fell off the bars at gymnastics last night and hyperextended my elbow.

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

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.

When I was four years old I fell off the bleachers and hurt myself poorly. This was a very critical condition in which hurt me in several ways. But not only I wasn’t being watched and I got told to run down the bleachers. This was just a start to everything when my head hit the cold hard ground at the softball park.

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.

I started playing softball at the age of 5, as I grew up I continued playing, eventually getting to the highest competition for my age. I worked extremely hard. Softball was my whole life, my world revolved around it. I was a pitcher; I played for multiple different teams. I had a team Canada pitching coach, did personal training, every day I practiced or played ball. I didn’t have breaks and I didn’t want breaks. I worked hard to get where I got. At the age of 15, grade 10, I had developed nerve damage, I was in a walking boot or a cast for almost a year, nothing got better, we did cortisone injections into my foot hoping that would help, I got the injections then was put in a cast, I was scheduled for surgery but before the operation when

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.