This is the story of the time I almost became paralyzed from the neck down.
Four years ago I was a 17-year-old kid working as a lifeguard for our high school pool. The job was pretty nice. Considering no one ever really got hurt; it felt like I was paid to hang out around the pool all day. I worked a decent amount in the summers because I would teach swim lessons to little kids between the ages of three and ten. I got along great with kids and I was always the life guard to receive big tips from the kid's parents.
The pool was indoors so we would be open in the winters as well. Although no one really thinks about going swimming in the winter time, so often I would find myself, up on my perch, watching an empty pool, or an old man come to swim laps for an hour. Sometimes my supervisor would let me swim around while he chilled next to the pool.
One night in the winter time, my brother, me and a bunch of older high schoolers planned to visit the pool at night when they were open between seven and nine. We did this somewhat frequently and often times someone would do something stupid or dangerous. Like jumping from the observation deck into the shallow end which is like a story high. This was the Friday night that kicked off our winter break, so everyone was a little too excited. One kid kept trying to throw a volley ball at me around the pool.
Actually before I explain, allow me to premise with this: we had a shallow end and a deep end. The shallow end varied in depth between waist to chest deep. the deep end was about 16 feet deep. As a lifeguard we strongly uphold the no diving in the shallow end, but if you know any better then you can dive in the shallow end without getting hurt. The swim team does it all the time, you just have to make sure you swim out and not down.
This time I was careless.
The kid threw the ball at me and I decided to avoid it by diving into the waist deep shallow end. I mistakenly swam down and not out. The instant my head hit the floor, I felt a jolt of pain travel through my arms as a wave. I got up out of the water to see everyone staring at me with an "oooh that must have hurt" expression on their face. My brother asked me if I hit my head on the bottom. Afraid of embarrassment, I denied hitting my head. Then he pointed out the my nose was gushing blood, so I went to the bathroom and cleaned off my face until the bleeding stopped.
During my trip to the bathroom I noticed something that was deeply unsettling for me. I stopped the bleeding but the pain in my arms hadn't stopped yet. Also, this pain was unlike any other pain I had ever experienced in my entire life. If I had to describe it, I would say it felt like a hundred needles were injecting fire into the my entire nerve system in my arms. The pain traveled in waves of throbbing that rushed into any part of my arm that reacted to stimuli, such as a twitch of the finger or a light tap on my arm. Oddly enough my neck didn't hurt at all. I had free range of motion without any pain.
At this point I was afraid of creating a scene or worrying everyone so I pretended like the pain wasn't there. Eventually in the night I told a friend who luckily went behind my back and told my brother about what happened. We got home and he told my parents. They were pissed at me for not telling anyone. At first they were going to take me to the E.R. but I told them that if the pain wasn't gone in the morning I would go.
The next morning had come and surprisingly the pain only felt worse. I told my mom so she took the day off of work and took me in to get checked out. After seven hours of scanning, waiting for results, and wearing a neck brace. The doctor informed me that I pinched a nerve in my neck that controlled the feelings in my arms. He told me that it was a miracle that my neck hadn't broken and that I was still walking that day. My dad told me that what I had was called a stinger, and that stingers were common in football injuries.
This pain stuck with me for my entire winter break or about two weeks of the most intense pain of my entire life. Eating was hard, showering was hard, getting dressed was hard, sleeping was hard. The only time I felt relief from the pain was when I would put my hands under water that was so hot, no one I know could bear to touch it. After two weeks the pain faded away.
Let this be a lesson to the reader that I had to learn the hard way. As young person, you are not invincible. Rules are there for a reason. What I did was probably the dumbest thing I will have ever done in my life. My entire life/future was almost taken away from me in the blink of an eye. As kids we tend to not think things through. We take actions without considering the ultimate consequences. I learned the hard way that reality does not go easy on anyone, even if you're a kid with your entire life ahead of you.
