April 24th, 2019 was a normal spring day. I was in a great mood because I had finished my homework and my mom was driving me to my baseball game. The Portland Trail Blazers had  just beaten the Oklahoma City Thunder in the playoffs the night before and I was at that game. I was having an amazing day. Little did I know that I was going to experience a life changing event. 

The baseball game was going great, it was neck and neck . Now it was the top of the fourth inning and I was told to play center field. As I was running out to center field I  thought to myself, “Do I need sunglasses? Nah, it’s only center field. The sun won't be in my eyes.” The game carried on. There were people on first and second base when I noticed a heavy hitter come up to bat. He was taller and stronger than anyone else on the field. The pitch came and he rocketed the ball into the sky. I started tracking the ball while it was in the air and I got right under it. Then all of a sudden the sun beamed into my eyes and I couldn’t see the ball. I stayed in my spot trying to find where the ball went. BAM! I felt this numbing pain right in my nose. I noticed the ball on the ground right next to me and I bent over. My teammate ran next to me and threw the ball back to the infield. I saw blood dripping from my nose onto the field. I took my glove off and saw my teammate’s dad, who is a firefighter.  He ran right next to me on the field. He told me, “Your nose is bleeding very badly,” and he put a cloth under my nose to catch the blood. Right when he did that blood squirted out of the center of my nose. He held the cloth on my nose and we walked off the field. Then he told my parents that I needed to go to the emergency room immediately. So my mom stayed at the game to gather all of my baseball gear and my dad and I rushed to the hospital.

 Once I got into the car, I really started to feel the pain. I felt as if someone had a bucket of lava and was slowly drizzling it on my face. We finally arrived at the hospital, which felt like an eternity, and we walked right in. To our surprise, there was no one else in the emergency room.  “Thank the Lord!” I thought. I sat in a wheelchair and a nurse pushed me to a room. Once we got to the room I finally opened my eyes to see the nurses and my dad and they helped me get on the bed. The nurse told me how they were going to get a clear tube and I would have to blow all the blood out of my nose. The nurse came back with the clear tube and put it under my right nostril.  The tube sucked all the blood out of it. She did the same with the other nostril but this time I had to blow the blood out. I tried but right as I did I felt this horrible shock throughout my whole face. I started crying because of how badly the pain was. The nurse understood and removed the clear tube from under my left nostril. 

I still had excruciating pain from my nose and the nurse came back in and told me I was going to get a shot that would soothe my pain. She gave me the shot, which surprisingly I didn’t even feel because of how badly my nose was hurting. The shot was attached to a tube that they taped on my arm. She told me that she was going to get another tube that would be attached to the one that was on my arm and in the tube it would have a drug that would relieve the pain. She came back with the drug and the tube and put it together and the drug went throughout my body. She told me that the drug was called morphine.  At first it was a weird feeling because the morphine was extremely cold.  It was like I was hanging upside down in a cave on the ice planet of Hoth. I felt like ice water was flowing through my veins. The drug was so cold that I could actually feel it flowing throughout my body. Then all of the pain from my nose went away. I have never felt a better or more soothing feeling than I did when all of that pain magically drifted away.

 Afterwards, I went to a room where they put me in a CT scan to see how badly my nose was broken. Then, after I got scanned, they took me back to my room which had a TV that was playing the Blazer game from the night earlier. The Portland Trail Blazers had faced the Oklahoma City Thunder in the first round of the playoffs, game five. We waited for an hour until the doctors came back and told us that my nose was indeed broken. I would need to get surgery in three weeks. They also told me that I should not go to school the next couple of days to let my nose heal. I missed four days of school leading up to my surgery.

When the day finally arrived, I was pretty nervous.  I wondered if they were going to be able to fix my nose or if it would be crooked for the rest of my life.  My Uncle Jason broke his nose playing baseball and his nose has been crooked ever since. The moment of truth finally arrived, but I don’t remember very much of it.  They put this mask on my face and told me to count as high as I could.  I remember counting to twelve, and the next thing I knew, the surgery was over.  My dad later told me that I had counted to eighteen, but I don’t remember those final six numbers. The doctor came in and told me that I would have to wear a splint on my nose for the next three weeks. I was not supposed to shower, play sports, or do anything fun for those excruciatingly long 21 days. During that time I had three different splints that I had to wear because the others kept falling off. 

Finally, after my third splint came off, I was healed and able to go back to my normal life. I did return to the same baseball team and got to participate in a few games before that season was over.  I learned several lessons that day.  The first lesson I learned had to do with the baseball field.  I learned that I always need to have my sunglasses handy and ready to go when playing in the field.  I also learned that I should probably cover my face with my glove if the sun ever blinds me like that again. 

 More than that, I learned that life doesn’t always go the way I plan it to go. Sometimes life throws you a curveball.  When that happens, you just have to make the most of it.  This experience gave me the opportunity to be thankful for all the wonderful things I have in my life.  It also gave me a chance to be thankful that we serve a living God, because today my nose is totally healed! I think that life is one big lesson, and there is always something to be learned.  I just have to keep my head up to see what life might throw my way today.