Every Survivor has a story that makes them different and sets them apart from the competition.
This is my story.
When I was ten years old, I broke my femur. I was playing soccer and I went to go shoot the ball when the goalie dove in and her HEAD hit my leg.
YES. Her head literally broke my femur.
The kicker here is that my parents did not think my leg was broken, they assumed I twisted it or pulled something. So I didn't go to the hospital for TEN hours. That's right. for TEN hours I was sitting at home on the couch... with a broken femur.
The only reason they decided to take me to the hospital was because I had to go to the bathroom. I could barely move the pain was so bad. We didn't have a wheel chair, so we made a make shift wheelchair out of an office chair.
Uh huh. An office chair. They decided we should probably figure out what was wrong at that point.
So we drove to the hospital. My parents carried me into the ER, and jokingly they said, "Sherri, when we get in, scream really loud. Then we can get you looked at faster!"
But there was no need to fake a scream because on the way in, my leg caught the sliding door of the ER.
As you can imagine, I screamed.
The ER nurse took me back straight away. They took some x-rays, and came back with the results.
The timeline here is a little foggy for me, the pain (or the morphine) has dimmed down what I remember from that point.
But after they came back with the results, my parents were visibly upset. I'm pretty sure they felt guilty for not taking me to the hospital earlier. The nurses and doctor were shocked that I had dealt with the pain so well and that no further damage had been done in that ten hour stretch.
Not less than an hour later, my father and grandfather gave me a little blessing before my emergency surgery.
I went in to the ER, and came back out with a HUGE cast on my leg. The cast went from the top of my femur to the top of my toes. That cast was put on just in time for summer! It went on in May, and came off in September. #bestsummerever!
Little did I know this would only be the beginning of the drama with my broken femur. Because not only did I break my femur once, four years later it would have to be re-broke.
But that is a story for a different time!
The moral of this is: If I can survive a broken femur with out any pain killers for TEN hours, then I can totally survive Survivor.
Sherri Riggs
-the Survivor Girl
