My worst day started off when I woke up in the morning and felt a sharp pain in my knee like needles poking into my skin. I had injured it slightly the day before at a soccer camp for my club team. I had just got up, and I was sunburned, and my knee hurt, and I just DID NOT want to go to camp for the final day. My mom told me that I should try and go anyways and if I felt really bad I could call her and go home.
I went to camp and started playing with my teammates. As the day was rolling by and the pain of my knee was slowly fading, everything was getting better. We had just come back from a water break when I decided to put on my friend’s goalie gloves and play goalie. My friends put some shots in, and everything was going fine until my coach called out and said “I’m going to take a shot now.” He shot the ball from the corner of the 18 yard box, and I saw the ball moving toward the left post. Then, all of a sudden, the ball started curving in the other direction. My body was already moving toward the left side, but the ball was moving toward the right side. I hit the brakes and adjusted to the other side, but I realized the ball was about to go in, so I stuck my right arm out in an attempt to stop the ball. I felt the ball hit my arm, and I thought “yes! I saved it,” but then I felt and overwhelming wave of pain. It felt like my entire arm had been jammed in like when you jam your finger but my entire arm. It was like somebody had grabbed my bone and shoved it up into my upper arm.
I ripped off my gloves like someone trying to get rid of a hot potato, and I said to my coach while running to him, “I think it might be broken.” I thought back to that moment later that day. I thought what I said was strange because I said it before I even looked at my arm. My coach looked at my arm and said “Yep, that might be broken.” Then, for the first time I looked at my arm. There was a slant in the middle of my arm going down while the lower part of my arm was straight. My coach and I went to go sit down. He told me to try and move my fingers. I tried to move them, but they wouldn’t move no matter how hard I tried, like a monk in the middle of his meditation. My arm felt super weak.

My coach called my mom and told her that I had injured my arm pretty badly, and that she should come pick me up. About 20 minutes later my mom arrived. Those 20 minutes were the longest of my life. We went in the car to go to the doctor’s when she asked me how it happened. I explained the story to her while we waited outside of the doctor’s office. Finally, I was called to get an x-ray. I went into the room and got the x-rays and came out. We waited a little bit more until the doctor got the x-rays. She took a look at it for only a second before she looked up and said “Yeah that’s a broken arm.” She showed my mom and I the x-ray, and I could see a line through my bone where it had broke. The line was about fingernail thick. Then the doctor said, “I’m sorry to have to give you more bad news, but you will have to drive up to Downtown L.A. to get your arm casted because everywhere else is booked up.”

So off I went to Downtown with my Dad and my Mom. Finally when we got there, we went into their waiting room. When we were called they wanted to x-ray my arm one more time. They x-rayed it and they saw that not only had I broken it, it was slanted too. They told me they needed to set it, which means they had to turn the slant into a straight line by grabbing it and pushing it. They told me they could either slam it quickly and feel a big pain for a small time, or they could give me a shot in my broken arm to numb the pain. I thought that this decision was like picking my poison.

But the doctor was waiting, so I decided to go with the shot. I looked at the needle that the doctor was about to inject me with. It was full of yellow liquid. I laid down on the table, and I closed my eyes. I couldn’t get over the fact that they were putting a needle into my broken bone. I felt the needle slide into my skin and past it into my broken bone. It felt like someone was pushing down on my bone. After about 20 seconds the doctor pulled the needle out. At first everything felt the same. But after about 10 minutes my entire right arm and hand was completely numb. My mom touched my arm and hand, and I couldn’t feel anything.

It was time to set it. The doctor held my arm and started pulling my wrist and arm in opposite directions with great force. But I didn’t feel anything. I looked over at my Dad who at first was watching but then turned around because he didn’t want to watch anymore. I heard a little snap, and my arm was re-aligned. Next, they had to cast it. Next, they had to cast it. They told me to bend my arm so the lower part of my arm was slanting up and my upper arm pointing straight forward. The casting went well, and when they were done, my whole arm was covered with a green cast. I was unable to bend my right arm at all. Before we left the doctor told me one more time “You are not allowed to play any sports or soccer for around two months.” “And, no running, no jumping, no climbing.” After the doctor said that, I thought, “This is the worst day ever.”