All my life I've been pretty clumsy. At 8 months old I had my first surgery and it's been downhill from there. I had surgery on my eye at that age, I broke my first major bone at 8, my right ankle. From then on my life was full of doctors visits for sprained ankles, other broken bones, and surgeries for all kinds of things. Since this is my blog you're going to learn about every surgery and broken bone.
Let's start with broken bones because that's more interesting. I broke my right ankle at 8. I was picking up dinner with my mom. She told me I needed to get in the back seat, I started climbing from the front to the back of the car. Our car had bucket seats, so my foot got stuck in between the seats. I turned all the way around, sat down and my foot was facing forward. I wound up having a rotational fracture in my ankle, and now when I get x-rays of that ankle I can see my old break line.
Then when I was 10 I broke the growth plate in my left wrist. I was trying to walk away from the dinning room table and my pajamas pants got stuck on a cabinet door knob, it was set low, I pulled away to leave and I started to fall. I put my hands out to catch myself, dumb idea. I landed on hardwood floors, my dad (he's a OR nurse) splinted my wrist so it didn't move and my family took me to the hospital.
Then later that year I was at a store with my mom and I decided it was a good idea to ride on the back of the cart like I had seen other kids doing. They didn't get hurt so I didn't think I would. The cart wound up falling backwards and smashed my thumb. I broke the base of my thumb. It was volleyball season so my dad made me a hard splint so I could still serve. I'm right handed and broke my right thumb.
Then in 7th grade I was in The Little Mermaid, Sebastian the crab (takes bow, thank you thank you!) and we were all hanging out in the auditorium for the time we needed to get ready in hair and makeup. Someone did something and I started chasing them (keep in mind I was like 12 I think) everything was fine until I slipped off of the last step on a like 5 step stair case and broke my left ankle. I screamed and everyone thought it was a joke until I started crying. My best friend Kaitlynn went to get my mom and one of my friends started singing with me to get my mind off of it. My mom called my dad and he came up to tape my ankle. I didn't think anything was wrong because I had sprained my ankle so many times before that. I did all 3 performances on crutches, good thing I was a crab that could have more legs haha. I didn't go to the doctor until the play was done.I had a pretty good fracture.
Then my freshman year of high school it was track season and I'm a thrower. There's this thing called a toe board and it is in the front of the circle.
It's that white piece at the front. So I smashed into the front of the circle and felt something pop. I finished my 2 remaining throws and went up to my dad (he's also an athletic trainer) he taped me and I went to. throw the discus. The next day I went to urgent care to get it looked at and it turns out that I all but snapped my big toe in half! That pretty much stopped my track season.
Then when I was 20 or 21 I dropped one of those TV trays on my foot and broke the top of my left foot. I had to wear a boot for about 3 weeks because if the break shifted I would have had to have a plate put into my foot. Luckily it never shifted so I was pretty lucky there.
Between all of these big breaks I broke all of the rest of my fingers and all of my toes except one. Now it's time to learn about surgeries. There's been a total of 20 I think.
The first was at 8 months old, I had to get my tear duct opened so not that big of a deal, it took longer for me to be put under anesthesia than the procedure took.
When I was 1 I had my first set of tubes in my ears. Then at 2 I had another set put in. So thanks to those tubes I can tell you that I'm getting an ear infection about 2 days before my ears get inflamed. It's still hard to get doctors to believe me. I've wound up in the hospital because my ears were swollen shut.
In 2nd grade I had my tonsils removed, pretty standard. Or so you would think, I then had to have my tonsils removed again. That only happens to very few people. I had tonsil tissue all the way down my throat. This has won my brother quite a few bets.
All my life I was knock kneed. Meaning my knees touched when my feet were apart. I could stand with my feet about 8 inches apart and my knees touched. Luckily when I was 12 one of the only doctors to do a procedure on knock knees was here in St. Louis. I had to go in about every two weeks and have x-rays to check the space in my growth plates. This surgery required a bunch of math to figure out when I was going to stop growing so I could have plates put in on the inside of my knees to stop the growth on the inside and make the outside straighten out.
The plates in my knees sucked!! They hurt in the cold and made my knees ache because of the metal. I wound up getting an infection in my right knee and had to have emergency surgery to get rid of the infection. I was in the hospital for about a week on IV antibiotics.
About 6 months after the emergency surgery on my knee I had my plates removed. I was done growing and my doctor decided that taking the plates out of my knees was the best thing for me. We discovered that my body doesn't like foreign things. So out came the plates.
My sophomore year of high school I had been playing volleyball all summer. I also realized that my right eye was constantly watering. I went to the doctor and we learned that my right tear duct had closed up again. This time we couldn't do the same surgery that we did when I was a baby. They had to create a new place for my tears to drain. I wound up having a hole drilled into my nose for my tears to drain out of. So because I was playing volleyball I had to wear those dumb looking safety glasses all season.
So after volleyball season ended I sprained my ankle pretty badly. I went to see the doctor and he put my heel in his hands and moved my ankle in a circle. I was told that he had never felt an ankle so loose. The only option I had was to have a procedure called the Brostorm-Gould. It's an ankle reconstruction surgery. I was 15.
I did really well for about 3 years. I mean I tore my ligaments and tendons a few more times after my surgery but I got really lucky that putting a cast on me would get my ligaments and tendons back in place. After tearing everything once again a cyst popped through my tendons. I had it removed when I was 18 and missed 2 weeks of track season my senior year of high school. I got to throw the rest of the season and everything was fine.
When I was 19 I woke up one morning in a ridiculous amount of pain in my right side. My parents took me to the hospital and I had a bunch of tests run on me. It turns out my gallbladder decided to stop working. I had to have it removed. I also had something called an upper endoscopy and we found out that I had 7 ulcers. 2 at the base of my esophagus and 5 in my stomach.
Again when I was 19 I was having a huge amount of pain in my right side. I went to the hospital and they then transferred me to another hospital that had a better OBGYN department. I had been told that I had cysts on my right ovary by a doctor about 7 years before this visit. I told them that and they did an ultrasound and checked. I got told there was nothing wrong with me and if I was still in pain the next day to go see a general surgeon because it was probably my appendix. Luckily I had an amazing general surgeon. I went in to see him the next day. He was the same person that did my gallbladder. He decided that he would go in and take a look around to see what was going on. I had surgery that same day. He found that my appendix was starting to go so he removed that. While he was looking around he discovered that I didn't have cysts on my right ovary. I was born without a right ovary. My right Fallopian was closed off and was infected. He had to open it up and clean everything out.
Then later that year the same doctor had to take a look at my stomach and ulcers again. He found that I had something called watermelon striation of my stomach and lower intestine. I got put on all kinds of new medications. Not so fun!
Then when I was 20 I had torn all my ligaments and tendons in my ankle so many times that they couldn't go back to where they were after the first surgery, so I had to have my ankle reconstructed again. This time I couldn't have any weight on my ankle for 12 weeks. Back in that wheel chair I went!! It was terrible. I started having panic attacks and got super depressed after that surgery..
21 was a good year. Nothing bad happened to me surgery wise. I was so happy!!
Then about 3 months ago I had surgery once again. I had been having that same pain in my right side and I got really scared that everything had closed up again. I went to see a specialist. He decided the best thing for me was to have an exploratory surgery to look for endometriosis and to check my Fallopian tube again. He also wanted to check to see if my left tube still worked. I had surgery June 1st of this year. It turns out my tube was closed off and infected again. He also found something called chocolate endometriosis. I had that excised and my right Fallopian removed.
Then about 2 months after that surgery I had another ulcer check. Turns out that I don't have ulcers anymore!! That was a pretty cool thing to learn. The only bad part about that was now we don't know why I still get random pain that feels like ulcers, but hey it could be worse.
I know that was a lot to read. If you made it all the way through here a gold star for you!!
I felt like this was something I needed to share with you guys. Growing up being the kid that was hurt all the time wasn't an easy thing. In between all of the things I mentioned above there were so many ankle sprains and things that I couldn't control that made me miss a bunch of stuff. I almost didn't pass my sophomore year of high school because I was sick or hurt so much.
Being that kid that everyone rolled their eyes at when they got hurt or was sick sucked. Hearing the "oh again?", "what happened this time?", and having people roll their eyes hurts. I try so hard to not get hurt but it doesn't work. People tell me to just pay attention to what's going on around you. It's not that easy.
This whole post stemmed from me slipping in the mud and rain on my way to work today. I sprained my ankle pretty badly and had to be picked up off the ground by my husband. As I laid on the ground in the rain and mud I felt so mad at myself for getting hurt once again. People don't realize how frustrating that is. So the next time someone you know that's accident pron gets hurt, stop to think about what you're about to say to them. They know that it happens a lot. They also know that to you it's just funny. To them it's frustrating and they don't like being the person that's always hurt. Make sure what you're about to say to them is something that won't hurt them even more.
Thanks for reading my lovelies!!
Xx Jordan
(P.S. the next post won't be as long or graphic lol)
