An Introduction To Me

I've only ever broken one bone in my body. Not a toe or a finger, not my ankle or my foot but my arm; I was three nearing four years old and my dad had just set up a new swing in our garden, he had trekked up to the shops to cushion the floor with bark and ensure it was all safe to go. Like a usual three year old a new swing was easily very exciting and i was straight on it.

From what I remember after a few goes I decided to pluck up the courage and stand up on the swing, obviously that wasn't exhilarating enough as I made a split second, in the moment, choice to jump off. It would have been gymnastic award winning if only the swing wasn't beginning to swing backwards as I jumped causing me to fly in an almost horizontal position leaving one of my arms tucked underneath me. Through shock, at first I didn't feel much of the pain so I jumped straight up and began to cry. Due to my lack of age my mum thought I had just taken a fall and bruised my arm so she sat me in the lounge to calm down. After an hour I still found it very difficult to move my arm as whenever I tried to an intense pain would shoot up it, that's when my mum decided I should go to the hospital.

My grandad offered to drive me and my mum to hospital so we could get dropped off rather than batteling for a parking space miles from where we need to be, whilst my grandma came over to look after my six year old brother as my dad was at work, however following a phone call he was quickly in the car to meet us at the hospital.

One of the things I can remember about the hospital, after waiting around for a while, is getting the x-rays. Placing my arm palm down was ok and those x-rays were taken with ease but then the doctor asked me to turn my arm over and that hurt more than anything so those x-rays, to my delight, were never taken.

A small break was found on my right arm so then I was taken to a small room where I sat on my dads lap and had a cast added to keep my arm in the same position until it healed, it was like paper mache going from my hand up to just past my elbow.

A few days later I had to return to get another part of the cast, this bit could be in all different colours and there was a room full of them in which you could pick from. Due to me having to be a bridesmaid at a wedding in a few weeks my mum passed on her verdict that I should get a light colour or white to go on top but despite that, much to my mums misery, I picked a bright neon yellow which obviously wasn't very suitable and was probably the worst colour to pick!

Luckily when the day came a beige cover was made to disguise my neon yellow cast and everything went smoothly. You can see that in all of the photos my arm is either behind my back or hidden behind whoever I was standing next to!

After a few weeks my arm was fully recovered and the cast was removed with big scissors, nowadays you wouldn't even be able to tell it was ever broken!