Where should I begin? It was a regular Sunday, February 1st to be exact. It was Super Bowl Sunday that day. I was excited like every other person to watch Tom Brady and the Patriots beat the Seahawks that day. All I could think about was the Patriots beating the supposedly “Number 1” ranked defense in the league, and all the hype they got. In my opinion they weren’t that good anyway. As I woke up that day I could feel that something was wrong, but with the excitement of the day I thought maybe I just slept wrong or was still sore from jogging the mile yesterday and the pain would go away as the day went on. I’m no stranger to random sharp pains or bruises somewhere on me, I’m one of those people who are always sick with something anyway, and so I shrugged it off and tried to go on with my day. As the morning went on and I was getting ready for church on Sunday like always, it felt like the pain was getting ready with me, as I was getting ready to go to church, so was the pain. I tried to take it all in as well as I could. The last thing I wanted to do was cause a problem on a Sunday morning with the way my parents are they just want a smooth Sunday morning that ends with me and my siblings ready for church, nothing more nothing less. Most people don’t want to wake up to a crazy Sunday morning anyway, I knew I wouldn’t, so I tried my best to forget about the pain and go on with my day. Eventually it got to a point that I just couldn’t take anymore and I told them. The first thing my father thought was that it was a blood clot as my family has a bad history of heart disease, high cholesterol, and everything else that could go wrong with the heart, but he knew it was bad too because not even I remember the last time I was in that much pain and even though I didn’t say anything, he could tell by all the grimacing and the look on my face so he took me to Emergency Room in the hospital.

Going to the emergency room, I thought it was called the “Emergency Room” because it was quick and the people there realized it was an “Emergency”. That’s a lie it is called the “Emergency Room”, but it’s just as fast as any other regular check-up. I walked in and told them my name, they took down some information and then I waited with my dad. At this point, I literally couldn’t sit still because of all the pain I was in, but I guess they didn’t notice because they were just doing their job like it was just another day at the hospital and either way they still get paid. While they were doing whatever they were doing, I was only slipping into more pain than I could bare to handle. It got to a point where I was in so much pain I couldn’t feel anything, at that point I was a little bit at ease, but then it became amazingly cold, it was a February in New England in 2015, and we all remember what that felt like. Eventually they took me to a room, all the while I was getting worse, the doctors had me fill out more information and gave me painkillers to make the pain go away. After a few hours, and a few shots they told me what was wrong: I had a testicular contusion, meaning that two veins twisted and wasn’t letting any blood or oxygen flow to the lower half of my body and they needed to have surgery to fix it and prevent it from happening again. The more time passed the worse it got. While I was on painkillers, I didn’t realize how serious the situation was and I didn’t want to, I was enjoying myself too much. After they put me under and operated on me. I woke up the next day at home, I was awake for like 30 minutes, watched part of the Super Bowl and fell asleep, it wasn’t until I was completely awake the next day to find out the miraculous ending. Everybody who has had surgery knows that the first thing you do after you’ve woken up from surgery is go right back to sleep, and that’s what I did. The doctor gave me some prescriptions and told me that I would have to miss a few weeks of school while I heal. Most people would be happy about this, to have a reason to miss school, but I wasn’t. Walking was hard and the medicine they gave me made me have to use the bathroom every five seconds and it was still snowing badly so there was really nowhere to go and nothing to do. I knew I was going to be at home alone for a few weeks, since my siblings and parents were all working and going to school and I was going to need something to past the time.

While I was at home recovering, people came and went, to check up on me, friends called to see how I was doing, but the most important one came from my friend Alicia. She was like my best friend, we didn’t talk every day and we really only hung out like once a month, but I always considered her my closest friend because she knew me the best. She was one of the only people that I never had to tell what’s wrong, she just always understood and was always there. She was the type of person that you could have a ten minute conversation with and she could get you to explain your whole entire life’s story in five. That kind of annoyed me about her and prevented me from becoming even closer to her in some cases. I felt violated that she could do that to me, and get underneath my skin and figure out secrets about me that I haven’t even said out loud yet. But it still made her one of the closest friends I’ve ever had because as much as she annoyed me, I needed her, she helped me grow. When I missed a few days she immediately called me and asked me what was wrong and even came over after school to help take care of me and waste the days away. She was always offering to help me get food, water, walk, and everything else, and me, not wanting her or anybody to see my weak side, always told her I was fine and I could do it by myself. She wasn’t stupid and she knew me better than I knew myself. One day she sat next to me and simply said that I didn’t need to act like I was the only person watching after myself, and that I had a whole entire family, friends, etc, there to help me, but that they could only help me if I let them.

At first I didn’t think much about it, but then I realize that I did have the tendency to not ask for help even when I needed it and that it would be hard for me to get through these next few weeks without at least some help and that without it, it would’ve been a lot more difficult than necessary to get through the next few weeks or to accomplish anything at all. It also would’ve made returning back to school, having missed so much, hard and catching up hard and moving forward hard and everything else hard if I force myself to go through it alone and without any help. She helped me realize that maybe if I had told someone about the pain when it first began it wouldn’t have been so bad and I wouldn’t have been in as much pain as I was, and if I had told more people about how long I was going to be out of school maybe I would’ve enjoyed it more, and could’ve had more fun. The fact that I made everything more difficult to do even though my intentions were to make myself less a burden by not bothering other people about it. With her help I realized that sometimes in order to get what you want and make things easier for yourself the first thing you have to do is to simply speak your mind.