Jake wrote the essay below for his English class.
DON’T DO ANYTHING STUPID
I can barely remember the last time I walked, it’s been so long since I've had a working left leg. That’s all changing soon. I want to be back up and walking by December because that's when my family goes to Disney. Hopefully I'll be ok then, but only time will tell, and my tall brown haired doctor. In January of 2022, I was running, walking, doing anything I wanted, but things don't always go to plan. Right after a delicious lunch of a ham sandwich and water, I went to the gym. My classmate tried to pull a joke on me and pull on my backpack and make me fall. When he did, my leg started hurting, and I was scared because that leg was the leg I had cancer in when I was three. I didn’t feel much pain at first because of adrenaline, when I got up and started walking; I felt a sharp pain in my leg.I told the teacher, "Mrs. Turner my leg hurts and I can't walk." She asked, "Would anyone like to help Jake get to the nurse’s office?" My friend Antonio volunteered and he helped me walk to the nurse’s office. Twenty minutes later, my step-mom came and picked me up. My step-mom is a nurse so she was asking me a lot of different questions like, "Where does it hurt?" or "What's the pain on a scale from 1 to 10?” My Dad was working on my computer when I got there, so I just sat on my bed for a while until he wasfinished so I could play video games. I just played video games for the rest of the day.
That Friday, my mom took me to the prosthetics place and I got an uncomfortable boot. When I first walked in the boot it hurt, but I got used to it. I didn't do much those following weeks, but after some time, I was able to walk without the boot. It hurt when I ran, “I hate this. I wish this never happened.” I just lived my life normally for the next month or so. Then in March, someone else kicked me in my bad leg, it didn't really hurt when it first happened. It hurt the next morning, I woke up that day and my leg really hurt when I walked on it. I asked my Dad if he could pick me up early that day, and he did. Thank God he did or my leg would've gotten worse throughout the day. The day after that I went and got x-rays. It turned out, that I had a fracture in my left leg.
From that time where the doctor said I had a fracture to the time I got surgery was terrible, I don’t know how I went that long without walking.I was in crutches the whole time, and I couldn't put any weight on it. I can't remember very clearly what happened in those 4 months of my life, but I can tell you with a lot of confidence, that it was pretty depressing. I fell a total of 2 times in that time period, and one of those times I thought that I got a fracture in my foot, but thankfully I didn't. I went on a cruise while I was on crutches and as you can guess, the cruise was not very fun. Although I did enjoy the cruise, it wasn’t very exciting. After the cruise I went to the doctor to get x-rays, and he said that I can get surgery done in 2 weeks. I was very excited that I was finally going to be able to walk again. A few days before my surgery was the 4th of July, so my family and I went to see fireworks. “The fireworks are very exciting and loud!” my sister exclaimed.
On the day of my surgery my Mom woke me up very early in the morning. On the way to the doctor's we stopped at Sheetz to get some breakfast, but I didn't eat anything because I wasn't allowed to eat food 12 hours before the surgery. When we got there I needed to get x-rays first and then I went to the actual hospital. Igot there at about 8 in the morning but the surgery wasn't until 1 in the afternoon. When I got to the waiting room they put an IV tube in my arm, and they took me to the operating room.They put me under anesthesia and when I woke up I forgot that they had done my surgery so I asked "Are you ready to do my surgery yet?” I didn't remember being put under anesthesia at that point, I thought I had fallen asleep in the waiting room. They put a nerve block in my leg because my leg was hurting a lot. Once they did that I was ready to go to my room. My Mom asked me what I wanted for dinner and after not eating for almost 24 hours, I was hungry, so I asked her if I could have Chipotle, and I did. I couldn't sleep well that night because I couldn't feel my leg so it made it hard to get comfortable. A nurse came in every 2 hours to check on me. The next day I left the hospital because they said that I was all set to go. It was about that time the nerve block wore off and my leg started hurting really bad on the way home. A few days later my leg started to feel a lot better.
I've been through a lot in my life, cancer, not being able to walk, and moving from Georgia to Virginia. I was 6 years old when that happened. Surgery is really high up on that list, becausethis was tough, like REALLY tough. If there's anything I learned from it is that I need to be more careful with myself, because you only get one body. I recommend that you follow the same, be careful, or as my doctor says, "DON'T DO ANYTHING STUPID".
