I was trudging through the snow in my yard and my dog, Princess, and I were playing rough. Princess and I ended up by a hill and so I stood up ready to go inside, but then Princess bumped into me from behind and I was slipping around on the icy snow. The next thing I knew, I was falling down the hill. But then all of a sudden I stopped and I noticed my right leg got stuck between the snow in a log, my whole body swung to the left and then…I heard a horrible cracking noise.

I panicked a little when I heard the horrid noise. I was struggling to get my leg out. I struggled and struggled and struggled and then I finally felt the sweet sense of relief. I was finally at the bottom of the hill. I needed to get back up the hill, so I stood back up, but I felt too weak in my leg and I fell right back down. That is when I really started to panic. I stood back up and fell again. No, I couldn’t have broken my leg. I started crawling up the hill instead since I couldn’t walk. I kept on trying and trying to crawl up the hill, but I kept slipping and sliding. Since I couldn’t crawl up the hill, I had to yell for help, which was kind of embarrassing.

“Help!” I shouted. I waited for an answer or, hopefully, my front door bursting open. No one answered.
“HELP!” I cried again.
“Hello?” THANK GOODNESS! It was my neighbor. He came into the yard and he saw me down the hill.
“Was that you calling for help?” he asked.
“Yes, could you go get my parents or my brother please? I can’t walk,” I answered as tears were rolling down my cheek.
“Sure, I’ll be right back,” he answered. I waited for a little bit and saw my brother running down the hill.
“Are you okay?” he asked.

“No. I can’t walk. I keep falling,” I panicked. He grabbed my arms, put me on his back and carried me up. When we got inside, he was out of breath, so he set me down on the couch and my parents came in the room, shocked.
“What happened?!” my mom asked panicking. I told her the story and she told me to try and straighten my leg, but it hurt when I tried, so we went to the ER. On the way to the ER, there were tons of emotions going through my head. However, anger, sadness, and fear were my main emotions. One of the nurses gave me a wheelchair as we waited for a little bit and they finally called me in. We got into the room and they helped me on to the bed. They asked me what happened, so I told them the story. Then they asked me to choose a number between one and ten, to rate the pain. I chose eight. Then they left after they got the information, so my dad suggested that I watch some T.V. to get my mind off things. There were no good shows on that I liked, so we watched a movie. After a while the nurse came in with a man, the doctor most likely, and had a brace and some crutches. They lifted my leg carefully and wrapped my leg in the brace and I stood up and tried moving around with the crutches. I was doing good, with crutches I mean. They didn’t know what was wrong with my leg and they would let me know on Tuesday. We went home and I didn’t go to school Monday and Tuesday. Of all things, why did this have to happen?
Tuesday came and we went to the doctor’s office. I got my x-rays and it was a break. The growth plate, by the knee, was disconnected from the tibia. The next day I went to get my cast and my cast was bigger than I expected. It was from my thigh to my ankle, which is pretty big. But I got to choose the color and they added sparkles on it, my suggestion of course. The next day I went to school and got all kinds of unexpected attention. I heard all kinds of ‘Oh my gosh! What happened?’ or ‘What did you do?’, but I explained, to some people, it got annoying after awhile repeating the same story over and over again. It was a bummer that I broke my leg, but I had a ton of people help get to my next classes and I got to leave classes early. It was hard though, the crutches made me ache because of how big and heavy the cast was and I couldn’t really do anything for myself for a long time; it was like I was a little kid that couldn’t do anything for him or herself. After waiting six weeks to get my cast off, it was finally the day, my cast was coming off. The doctor pulled out a small buzz saw and sawed my cast in half. I loved the sweet sense of relief, but I couldn’t make my leg straight, my leg was so stiff after those long, torturous weeks. At least my cast was off, but I still had to use my crutches until I could walk on my leg.

I was so happy to be out of that cast, but I still had crutches...not fun. A few days after I got my cast off, I went to physical therapy. The therapist checked the strength of my leg and how far I could straighten it. After a couple of weeks, my leg was basically straight. A couple more weeks later I could walk, well kind of. I was walking with one crutch, which is basically cheating, but it helps me. Then a week after that, I could walk, without a crutch. Sad thing was that I didn’t get off my crutches in time for my dance recital. This recital I was looking forward to, than any other dance recital that I have danced in, because it was the first year I was taking lyrical and it was a duet, the song was one of my favorite songs that I suggested for the recital, the costume was so beautiful and I did not even get to be in it. That was a very sad, treturous day for me. The only good thing was that I was off my crutches two weeks before school ended, so that kind of got my mind off of the fact I wasn’t dancing in my recital.

The experience of breaking my leg changed me AND I also learned from this. The reason why this experience changed me was because I use to be like this little dare devil, at least that is what my mother called me, but after the leg injury, I am more careful about what I do and if you have known me long before the leg injury then you would have said I REALLY changed from that incident. The reason why I learned from this is because I learned I need to make sure that I am careful of what I am doing, so that I don’t hear that horrible cracking noise again.