Life Decided for Me

This is my personal essay I wrote for creative writing last year, and it's also what I won 1st place for in the Southwest Prarie Confrence Literary Festival.

During the middle of the night, I woke up, and I couldn’t stop tossing and turning and nothing seemed to help. My eyes were open, but all I could see was darkness. I had all these different scenarios of how before, during, and after surgery was going to go the next day. Trying to imagine the people and how the room would look, so that maybe all that was happening wouldn’t seem so scary. For me, not knowing was just as nerve wracking as knowing.
I woke up at 10 o'clock in the morning, my surgery was scheduled for 1 p.m. on May 4, and I needed to be there an hour early at 12 in the afternoon for pre-operative paperwork. I felt really nervous and scared, because I didn't know what to expect. I wasn't really sure of anything in that moment. When I got to the surgery center, I was really cold and I was shaking. Goose bumps were running up and down my arms. Even though it wasn’t a hospital, it smelled and felt like one. They took my weight and vitals, and then they gave me a gown to put on and some anti slip socks. I put all my belongings in this huge plastic bag, and they put it away until I was ready to go home. The nurse who put in my IV was really nice, she made me feel at ease. She talked to me about myself and how I was feeling beside the surgery and that distracted me from thinking about where I was. After the anesthesiologist and another nurse came in to talk to me and my parents, I just sat there waiting for the doctor. I felt like I was waiting forever. When he finally came he was dressed in scrubs along with his surgical nurse. I specifically remember her; she had on scrubs that were bright yellow with Tweety Bird on them. I remember her because she was one of the few people that made me smile that day. They took me to the O.R. and the last thing I remember was breathing into the little plastic mask.

I woke up and I wasn't quite sure where I was. Once I was a little more awake, I felt the worst pain I've ever felt in my life. It felt like someone was stabbing at my knee and trying to rip it off. I started crying and trying to move my leg. It was like I could feel the pain, but I couldn’t really feel my leg. Almost like I wasn’t in control of my body and couldn’t move. The nurse gave me a shot in my side to help with the pain. I remember her telling me that it was going to hurt, but I didn’t feel it at all. After I got the shot, it was like the pain disappeared. I was like a miracle drug. A few hours later the nurse had me sit up in a chair. My knee was all wrapped in bandages and I could barely move it. I had never felt so tired in my life, my throat was sore from the tube and my knee was still throbbing. At four in the afternoon it was time for me to go home. I had my crutches but I was too tired to use them. I sat in the wheel chair and they wheeled me out to the car. Once I was in the back seat lying down, my mom got back there with me and we left. There was a lot of construction on the roads so it was bumpy, stop and go traffic for the entire 30-minute ride home. Every time we hit a bump it hurt. I cried almost the whole way home. I got home and I just laid on the couch, I couldn’t lie in my bed because I couldn’t lie on my side like I usually do. It just hurt too much. So I had to lie on my back, I could elevate my leg on the couch, so the couch served as my bed for a while.


I couldn’t put any weight on my leg for six weeks and it felt like the six weeks would never end. You always hear that you find out who your friends are when you go through hard times, and that really is so true. I found out all the people I thought were my friends really weren’t. The people that said they would be there for me and would come and see me just seemed to disappear. I know that people will always let you down and you always hope that they won’t, but you never think they’ll be so cold and distant. I felt like when I needed a friend the most, I had none, and I felt really alone. A lot of the time I felt like I just wasn’t important enough to have someone care. There was a constant thought running through my mind all the time, why? I was thinking what did I do to deserve this kind of treatment from “friends”? I can’t control my life and what happens in it, and if I could control it I certainly wouldn’t ask for this to happen. I don’t feel like I can share things with them anymore, because it's just not the same and I don't think it ever will be.
Aside from the friendship issues I was going through, there was the issue of all the chores I usually did. Now my mom was doing all of them on top of taking care of me and the rest of my family and working. After a while I really saw how all the things I do around the house effect my whole family, even the little things that don’t seem to matter. I felt so bad, because I saw how hard doing everything around the house without my help was on my mom and dad, and I wished I had been better about it before. I never thought I’d miss being able to clean and do laundry so much but I really did. Once I was able to get around better I tried to do the chores I was supposed to be doing before to help out more, but I would just get discouraged because I couldn’t do anything with crutches under my arms 24/7.

One day I had one of those “aha” moments. After not being able to help and do chores for my mom and being kind of selfish and oblivious to what was going on around me, I realized that before my surgery I really took everything for granted. I never gave a second thought to much of anything: Sports, friends, family, chores and priorities. And when I couldn’t do anything at all and all my plans had changed, I really saw how much I should think about the decisions I make and the actions I take and that I should appreciate them more. I had to change my plan. I was always active and I never had to worry about not being healthy. I loved playing soccer, I played when I was younger and I played my freshman year, I planned on playing all the way through high school and maybe even college, and now I couldn’t play at all. Everything changed in the blink of an eye, and I just wanted to go back to when my life didn’t seem so complicated. I went from being really active and running around all the time to absolutely nothing at all. I gained weight. That was another battle I faced. I was so used to being skinny and confident, but then none of my clothes fit at all and I felt like I lost all my confidence. That was when I had another “aha” moment. Before, I thought I could always look better. I always thought, “I could lose 10 or 20 pounds”, but compared to now I really didn’t need to change anything about my body. I was perfectly fine how I was, and I think I was the only person who couldn’t see that. So, even though I’m not how I used to be and I know I wont be for a while, I just have to be content with how I am even when I want to change.

I really didn't know what I had until it was gone. This surgery changed my life forever, all the way around. The way I view values, work, people and friendship. I learned to appreciate everything I am able to do and the things I do have, I don’t complain about nearly half as much as I did before, because I know that my situation can always be a lot worse. Through all this I tried to keep a positive attitude. Sometimes I had to fight really hard to not be negative, but if I would have given in and just had a screw the world, screw my life kind of attitude I don’t think I would have pulled through as well as I did. I missed the last month of school and my summer was pretty much shot. All I did was go to physical therapy and do the make up work for school. And I’m not perfect, just because I try to be positive doesn’t mean I always am. There were plenty of times where I just felt like giving up. But, all this has made me stronger. The way I think about it now is that you can’t expect life to always be okay and always change for the better, because sometimes, and a lot of the times, things go wrong and you just have to deal with them. You can’t blame things for what happens; you just go with the flow. I think we should be like butterflies, they’re metamorphic. They change completely into something new. I want to be ready to fly wherever life’s wind takes me and be okay with it. Even If I’m not okay with it at first I’ll learn to be okay with it in the end.

There isn’t any way possible for someone to understand all of this experience, no way to be able to relate unless they’ve been through something similar themselves and even then, it’s not the same for anyone. I’m far from the end of this road; I still have a long way to travel on it. My journey has been really rough and hard, but I’ve come out of it with a lot more of something good to show. I never thought I’d get so much good of something that seemed so bad. Part of me wanted to let this all out, but part of me didn’t because it is so personal. When I write these things and think about everything that occurred it makes me smile and cry at the same time. I smile because I’ve come so far and I cry for things I’ve lost. Sometimes it’s hard to believe it’s only been four months because it seems like it’s been forever. Sometimes if I close my eyes it still feels like I’m right back to where I was in June, and I don't think I would consider that a bad thing because I am constantly reminded of how far I've come. Not just physically but mentally too. It reminds me to stay that way and to keep moving forward.

This surgery has made my future plans crystal clear, too. Before I wasn't really sure of what I wanted to do with my life, I was constantly changing my mind. I have always been drawn to medicine but my math isn't the greatest so it always held me back because I thought I wouldn't be able to get through what I needed to be in the medicine field. I'm a lot more confident now and I'm sure that I can do whatever I want. If I can work hard to be where I am today then I can work just as hard to get where I want to be for my future.