Wheel World News Issue 42 March | Page 10

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remember if it was my sister or not, but then I felt two hands grab from under my arm pits and pull me up onto the sand. At this point, I was groaning in pain, and after a wave splashed over me, I kind of barked at the people (who were down by my side to see if I was all right) to pull me up further on the beach so that the waves wouldn’t splash over my face and I wouldn’t suck in my water. I heard someone say to call 911, as someone got an umbrella to shade my face from the sun. By this point, my dad had found out what happened and he ran over to help. As an athletic trainer for many years, he assessed me and gave me a bit of a fright when he squeezed my feet and asked me if I could feel it, to which my answer was no. I started apologizing and crying to him, but he said not to worry and to just keep talking to him. My mom and sisters had rushed over and were visibly upset at what they were seeing. I tried to put their minds at ease and tell them that I was

they were seeing. I tried to put their minds at ease and tell them that I was conscious and talking and OK, but what they saw was their son and brother, motionless on the ground with no touch sensation. The ambulance arrived shortly after this, but as they put me on the stretcher, I began vomiting out of control and that’s when even more pain hit me. As I was put in the ambulance, my mom jumped in and immediately held my hand. The ride to the hospital was the most painful part of everything. My mom and I were very concerned, I was in a lot of pain and with an extremely volatile stomach, and I still had sand and ocean water in my eyes, hair, and around my body. After we got to the hospital, they washed off my body a little bit and that’s the last thing I recall from that day.

I went in for surgery Tuesday afternoon, and came out later that night. I don’t remember much, because I was still heavily drugged, but I do recall kind of snapping at my family since that was one of the side effects of the anesthesia.

For whatever reason, I don’t remember how much the doctors actually said to me about what happened and what my condition was, other than it was a bruised spinal cord from my shattered C5 vertebrae bumping into it and that