A Painful Tackle
by JP Beldon
English Translation by Courtney Hanrahan and Trudy Suggs
Okay. Last Saturday at a football game against Kansas School for the Deaf, I played defense. A Kansas running back was coming my way, and I ran at him. One of my teammates ran towards him also, and as I got ready to tackle the running back, we both got to the running back at the same time. I missed the tackle, but as I fell down, the Kansas player ran straight into my hand at the same time as my teammate hit my upper arm. That caused my hand to bend back painfully. My wrist really hurt, and I was grimacing but trying to get through it. I was taken out for the rest of the game. I kept icing my wrist, and later that night, I wrapped it and the athletic director gave me some Tylenol. When I slept, the pain was really bad. Every time I moved my arm, it’d shoot with pain. The pain felt like, you know when you move your leg and it gets into the wrong position? That sharp pain that goes away when you move it back to the right position? With my arm, it was like that, but the pain didn’t go away when I moved it. It would finally ease after a while. I kept icing it. The next afternoon, my friend and I were playing. I was holding a ball and my friend knocked it out of my hand. That triggered the pain again, and the pain got worse . I kept putting ice on it. I’m wondering: we have a football game next week for Homecoming. Can I play? I really want to play, but what do we do about my wrist? How can you help me? Do we put a cast on it, or a brace? What do we do? Do I need x-rays to see if it’s broken or not? I seriously want to play, please.
