A life changing break

Probably one of the worst days in my life was when I fractured/broke my ankle and nearly severed a ligament in my foot.

I was playing basketball at the Rec Center, not unlike many other days. During a game of pick up, I elevated to attempt to dunk a rebound. Unfortunately on the way down I was undercut by someone on the other team (beware if I remember who you are). I landed with all of my weight on my right ankle and twisted it. I tried to shake it off as another twisted ankle and actually finished the game and played one more. Although excruciating, I was used to playing through pain, and I figured this was just a minor tweak.

It turned out that this case was anything but. I walked back to my dorm room and iced it for the evening and eventually fell asleep. I awoke to see my ankle was probably triple in size. It was purple and had swollen all the way up my calf. At this point I realized I should probably see a doctor. I ended up going through multiple X-rays and a plethora of different evaluations by doctors and orthopedic specialists. The verdict was that I had fractured the bone and the ligament was hanging on by a thread.

Now Williamsburg is known for many different things, but being accessible to people with crutches is probably not one of them. I had to endure 3 legged races to class everyday for the next 3 months until I could finally have surgery. It was not fun at all to crutch around campus for the limited time I was even allowed to be mobile. My forearms soon became the size of most peoples quads from all the extra attention from using crutches. The one thing that really did mean a lot was how helpful people around were. People I didn’t know often asked if they could carry my books or backpack. They would open doors for me and offer to help in anyway possible. The peculiar thing for me was that often times I hadn’t even met them.

Being as how I was a new student at W&M (I had only been here for a month and a half) this spoke volumes to the cohesion of the community. People genuinely cared about their neighbor’s welfare. I was definitely relieved once I was done with surgery and rehab to be able to walk again. I probably won’t ever be the same (I can’t play football anymore or make the same moves I used to be able to do). This was definitely an eye opening experience though. I learned a lot about the people I share this campus with. I was inspired to try and extend the same helping hand to people in need that was offered to me.