I remember crying in my father’s lap, sobbing, saying I didn’t want to do it. The nurse came over to me and said Do you think you could you drink this for me? What is it? I asked. It’s sugar water he replied. I drank it so fast not realizing how bad sugar and water could taste mixed together. The next thing I remember was a woman coming to my bed asking me about colors. She said I could pick three. I saw my two favorite colors neon pink and dark purple and I knew those were the ones.
Those are the colors I’ll spend the next three months looking at as I am bound to a hospital bed with a metal bar between my legs. I was six years old. When I was born I was born two and a half months early. No doctor, nurse or specialist could figure out why. I was born with a lack of oxygen to my brain causing it to bleed. Doctors told my parents I wasn’t going to live. I was left in the hospital for three weeks, my parents yearning for the chance I’ll survive. I did. Then as time went one I wasn’t developing the way other newborns were.
I was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy. Cerebral Palsy can cause many problems for the person who has it including low muscle tone, learning disabilities, seizure, loss of hearing, paralysis and more. Cerebral Palsy affected my legs to the point of where I could walk, but in crouched position with my right leg turned in and dragging. When I got older it became apparent to my team of doctors that I couldn’t go through life walking like this. Surgery became an option after multiple Botox injections and countless therapy sessions.
The surgery involved seven hours of sawing open both legs, cutting off an inch of bone turning the hip bones in, crunching the bone up putting it back in finishing it off with plates and screws. This would require me to be in bed for three months. Be confined to a wheelchair for a year and teaching myself how to walk again. After much consideration from my parents, the date was set, to what I believe to have been a chilly October day. I don’t recall how I felt when waking up on the day of surgery and I don’t remember the ride to the hospital, I do however remember walking in the hospital.
I had been there many times, so many times, in fact, I did first, what I always had done first. I went to the wishing fountain. Time and time again I would ask my father for a coin every visit and wish for something meaningless like a puppy or to meet a movie star. Today, however, I knew exactly what I was going to wish for. I begged my father for a coin. He gave me an old, average penny from his pocket. I held on to that penny with full grasp and wished with every part of my heart as I whispered, I hope I don’t have to have my surgery today.
I tossed my penny into the fountain and walked away. I got into the clear elevator with my parents and I we went up my eyes descended down to the wishing fountain. I knew it was a lost cause to hope for such a thing, but I still held on to a glimmer of that wish. I went about the hospital visit as I normally would. I paid a visit to the sticker man who passed out every sticker imaginable to ailing kids, I waited in the waiting room for what seemed like hours and hours and I had gotten multiple x- rays done.
Then it came to that time when I was picking out my cast colors. The doctor’s then came and rushed me down to the operation room where I was put under anesthetic. I drifted into a Sleeping Beauty type of sleep, deep and not penetrable. Then there was this shaking. I awoke to see a nurse in my face saying “We can’t do your surgery today, we can’t get the camera down your throat. We will have to reschedule. ” I was confused and discombobulated, but I knew one thing for sure my wish had worked.
