7. Personal Narrative- Breaking my leg

Vail, Colorado, one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Also, one of my favorite places to travel. I always get so excited to go to there with my dad’s side of my family. My dad is one out of seven children of Grandma and Grandpa Clawson and they have over 40 grand children. With this big of family, we obviously have such a fun time together no matter what type of vacation it is.

Almost everything about Vail is amazing. I love waking up to the smell of camp fire or just beautiful mountain freshness. I also love waking up to either a new fresh coat of snow on the ground or the birds chirping in the nice cool summer daylight. Snowboarding at the Vail Ski resort has the prettiest snow and such fresh powder that it feels like heaven on Earth.

Our family has had so many fond memories at Vail and there are still more to come. There was incident back when I was six years old that was such a scary thing for my family and I that we haven’t forgotten it but now look back on it and just remember it as a crazy event that happened to me when I was a young child.

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon in summer. Our family just got back from church (A branch up in Vail). It was nice and warm which meant bike time. My cousins and I loved to ride our bikes whenever we got the chance and we weren’t busy with family events. My cousins and I always loved riding our bikes and that’s usually all we did.

“I call yours Tayler!” I yelled. I always wanted to be like my older cousin Tayler. We would always trade each other’s bikes and I always wanted Tayler’s bike. We usually ride our bikes down a “really steep” hill (we thought it was really steep at the time), and then across a bridge and we would do that over and over again until someone told us to stop.

My dad was dating this girl named Melissa at the time and I really liked her. She seemed like such a cool girl. Melissa came out for a little bit to watch all the cousins ride bikes. I really wanted to impress her.

“Melissa! Watch how fast I can go down this hill.” I said excitingly.

“Ok! Just be careful!” She yelled, I was already half way down the hill. I could feel the wind in my hair I knew I was going SUPER fast. I looked back just to make sure Melissa could see my awesome speed that I was catching. She was. Right after I looked at her… BOOM! My front tire hit the pole of the bridge that we cross. All I could see was my self flip over and myself getting closer and closer to these huge boulders by the Colorado River. All I heard was bang and then a crack, and then blackness. The blackness finally went away and I saw my leg just laying there, limp as can be. It was the worst pain I have ever felt in my life, all I did cry, I couldn’t breath because of the pain. Melissa already went to go get my dad, and my cousins ran away, they were scared and didn’t know what to do.

A softball team was walking by and they saw me in pain and balling my eyes out. The carefully brought me up from the river, my father was already there, as well as the ambulance. Every minute that passed got more and more painful. All I heard was “hospital,” “broken,” and “give her oxygen.”

“Am I going to die daddy?” That’s all I could ask because I had no idea what was going on.

“Oh honey you aren’t going to die I promise, I’m right here.” My dad said as he was crying.

The put an oxygen mask on my face and all I started to fall asleep, I woke up and I was in an ambulance. I kept wanting to go back to sleep to get myself away from the pain but they wouldn’t let me. All I could see was my leg cushioned with a huge temporary cast. And all I felt was piercing pains and I would start balling every time that happened.

“ You are such a strong little girl!” the paramedic kept saying. “We are going to need to take her into surgery once we get to the hospital in Denver.” She whispered to my dad. I was so scared. When I got to the hospital, they put me right into the operation room. They gave me some medicine and then I started to just talk to the doctor. The next thing I knew I had 4 metal rods sticking out of my femur. It felt so weird, especially that I couldn’t walk or bend my left leg.

“The Surgery went great!” The doctor was telling my parents. “She broke the hardest bone to break in her body, the Femur. She is very lucky she didn’t hurt her head and she was wearing a helmet, this could have turned out a lot worst!” My mom just prayed right then and there to thank Heavenly father that everything is ok.

This was probably the scariest thing I have ever had to go through for my family and I. It made me realize how lucky I was to not have any other complications and also how I was being watched over. It also made me realize what handicap children have to go through with being in a wheel chair. It made me have a different perspective in life.