Premium Essay

Personal Narrative: Enduring The Pain

Submitted By
Words 754
Pages 4
Enduring the Pain One second I was shooting a ball, the next I was on the ground with two 90 degree bends in my leg, one at my knee, one half way up my femur. Your femur is the bone that connects your hip to your kneecap, tibia and fibula. The femur is considered the strongest bone in the body and also the hardest to break. There I was, eleven years old with the hardest bone in my body snapped like a pencil. The longest five minutes of my life were laying there on the ground, waiting for the ambulance to arrive. When they finally got to me they instantly knew the severity of the injury. The femoral artery travels down your leg. If this artery is sliced in any way, you will die in minutes from internal bleeding. My bone was broken in half, there was a chance of the bone …show more content…
Recovery was brutal. The days were long, and the nights endless. One of the most painful parts of recovery and the first time I had to show true endurance was getting out of the car after getting home from the hospital. My leg was still broken in two, there was no cast keeping it in place. It took three hours for me to move the distance from the car to temporary bedroom on the first floor of my house. This was just one of the many tests that would present themselves to me throughout recovery. The next major test that challenged me for over a year was physical therapy. Physical therapy was painful because every day you had to work on building muscle and a greater range of flexibility. The endless trips to therapy could have been easy to cheat, but if cheated, the full recovery time would be extended greatly. I went, I suffered, I cried, slowly building back the leg I once had. Endurance is only partially physical. The most important part of enduring something is being able to stay on top of it mentally. I stayed mentally on top of breaking my leg because I never quit pushing myself in recovery, and because I never

Similar Documents

Premium Essay

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

...Name: Thomson Levi’s Tutor: Dr. Francis Ochola Course: English Date: 23/10/2012 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, a poor young woman goes to the clinic for a physician to examine a perceived knot on her womb. The lady has been under pain for one year and explained the matter to the cousins; however, they did nothing until the pain became severe. The local physician had executed tests on syphilis that was negative, and advised her to visit the area main hospital for further medication. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed at Johns Hopkins Hospital with cervical cancer. In chapter 3, there is a presentation of medical conceptualization and treatment of cervical cancer, and description of the treatment of Henrietta at Johns Hospital. Dr. TeLinde at the Johns Hopkins was a leader researcher in this field, and interested in the demonstration of the then debate claiming noninvasive cervical cancer was merely invasive cancer. Cells were taken from her in the course of that exam and used without her consent in order to build up the first immortal cell line. In telling the story, the author draws from personal interviews and primary sources to offer insightful narrative accounts of the childhood of Henrietta, adulthood, her diagnosis, the illness, and tragic death. Rebecca expounds the HeLa’s birth and life and shows changes on the research concerning the realm of medical research, leading to both medical and scientific breakthroughs; however, also...

Words: 882 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Epicurean Ataraxia Research Paper

...On Attaining the Epicurean Ataraxia Being viewed as the key to authentic happiness in Epicurean philosophy, ataraxia is the tranquil state of mind freed from any pain, fear and disturbances that gives rise to our katastematic(still) pleasures. In particular, this essay will argue that the Epicurean ataraxia could be achieved by fearlessness, self-sufficiency and living a private life with friends. Each of the three points of my thesis will structure as an individual section, containing within the main arguments followed by criticisms and rebuttal. I. Fearlessness The elimination of fear and mental uncertainty is crucial to attaining the peace of mind. As Hibler has stated, Epicurus "narrow[s] inquiry to things people need answers for questions that cause them fear"; in fact,...

Words: 1709 - Pages: 7

Premium Essay

Anshu

...Mark Upchurch English 255 Professor Kalauli 3/6/2014 A Painting for the Mind Juliet Kono effectively conveys the devastation, horror, and depravity in Japan circa 1940 to 1950 through her unwavering sense of staying true to the imagery and setting of Japan during World War II as well as post war Japan. By effectively telling the story through the eyes of the protagonist Hi-Chan, she allows the reader to personalize not only with the main character but the setting that surrounds the main character as well. The continual turmoil and conflict that the protagonist undergoes contrast the underlying theme (the path to enlightenment) of the novel and remains consistent from beginning to end. There is no question that the author’s effectiveness in delivering the elements of fiction in her novel Anshu: Dark Sorrow creates in the reader’s mind a vivid portrait of the time and place the main character Hi-Chan was living in. By effectively conveying the setting of the novel, the persistent use of conflict with the protagonist, establishing a first person point of view, and the use of effective characterization, Juliet Kono is able to paint within the readers mind the thoughts and emotions within Hi-Chan as well as the world around her. By descriptively establishing the setting in Hawaii at the beginning of the novel, Juliet Kono allows the reader to assume a more peaceful and serene time when Hi-Chan was youthful and care-free on an island of abundant beauty, freedom, and most...

Words: 1391 - Pages: 6

Premium Essay

Comparing Pirandello's War And Dulce Et Decorum Est

...In War, a third-person narrative is used, while in Dulce et Decorum Est, Owen uses the first and second person narratives. Both texts lead the reader to think about the limitations of using patriotism to justify loss and suffering. In Pirandello's story, the passengers on the train discuss "which of [their] positions [are] worse” (Pirandello 1370) because they all have children who have been called up to fight in the war. By using the third-person, the reader becomes empathetic towards the stories of the characters, creating a more pitiful tone. In Dulce et Decorum Est, Owen addresses the reader, writing "you too could pace behind the wagon that we flung him in, and watch the white eyes writhing in his face” (Owen l.17-19). Other lines are written in the first person, such as when he describes the poison gas attack he witnessed, saying "under a green sea, I saw him drown” (Owen l.14). This perspective creates a traumatic tone because it places the reader in the story, causing one to imagine oneself in these horrific situations. While Pirandello uses the third person to create a pitiful tone about others’ suffering, Owen uses first and second person to appeal to the reader on a more personal...

Words: 1069 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

The Secret of Language Leadership

...SECRET LANGUAGE of • HOW LEADERS INSPIRE ACTION THROUGH NARRATIVE The LEADERSHIP STEPHEN DENNING John Wiley & Sons, Inc. More Praise for The Secret Language of Leadership “Out of the morass of strategies leaders are given to transform organizations, Denning plucks a powerful one—storytelling— and shows how and why it works.” —Dorothy Leonard, William J. Abernathy Professor of Business, Emerita, Harvard Business School, and author, Deep Smarts: How to Cultivate and Transfer Enduring Business Wisdom “The Secret Language of Leadership shows why narrative intelligence is central to transformational leadership and how to harness its power.” —Carol Pearson, director, James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership, University of Maryland, and coauthor, The Hero and the Outlaw “The Secret Language of Leadership is not only the best analysis I have seen of how and why leaders succeed or fail, it’s highly readable, as well as downright practical. It should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in engaging a company with big ideas who understands that leaders live and die by the quality of what they say.” —Richard Stone, story analytics master, i.d.e.a.s “A primary role of leaders is to create and maintain meaning for their organizations. Denning clearly demonstrates that meaningmaking comes from stories well told.” —Thomas Davenport, President’s Distinguished Professor of I.T. and Management, Babson College, and author, The Attention Economy “Steve...

Words: 100587 - Pages: 403

Premium Essay

Indian Camp

...man’s suicide in the short period of the story. The pregnant Indian woman struggles in labor for two days without any medical attention until Nick’s father’s arrival. Nick’s father describes to Uncle George after the procedure, “Doing a Caesarian with a jack-knife and sewing it up with nine-foot, tapered gut leaders” (18). The description of  Ernest Hemingway INDIAN CAMP I guess the beginning of the story is quite usual and perhaps even banal. The son wants to watch his father brings new life into the world. He is a young boy who helps his father. But on the other hand, despite the fact that there is only pain and violence in life, from the author point of view, I guess we are clearly shown, that the father takes care of his son and that he wants to preserve him from death. We see that the husband of the woman, who gave birth to the child couldn’t stand the pain and screams of the woman. And I guess the most important scene of the play is when the son asks whether everybody kills himself or...

Words: 7296 - Pages: 30

Premium Essay

Worldwide Non Western Cultures Faced Fundamental Challenges to Their Cultural Identities Not so Much a Recentering of Culture but a Decentering of Culture

...Otherness: Essays and Studies 1.1 October 2010 Haunting Poetry: Trauma, Otherness and Textuality in Michael Cunningham’s Specimen Days Olu Jenzen Early conceptions of trauma are intimately linked not only with modernity but specifically with the height of industrialisation (Micale and Lerner 2001). This is converged in the opening of Specimen Days particularly in the image of an industrial accident at the ironworks where a young man is killed by the stamping machine. His young brother, replacing him at the machine after the funeral, then experiences an apparition of the dead brother still trapped inside the machine, which leads him to believe that all machines house entrapped ghosts of the dead. Writing on the Victorians’ anxieties about internal disruption caused by the advent of the railway, Jill Matus (2001, 415) has pointed out that, Freud himself remarked in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), [that] there is ‘a condition [which] has long been known and described [and] which occurs after severe mechanical concussions, railway disasters and other accidents involving a risk to life; it has been given the name of traumatic neurosis’ (12). Freud’s remark brings to the fore the traumas of the industrial age as both individually and publicly experienced and negotiated. This condition of trauma as private and public, individual yet also societal is held in tension throughout Cunningham’s novel. Reflecting on the otherness of trauma and its vexed relationship to representation...

Words: 7114 - Pages: 29

Premium Essay

Ms Anita Yvonne Compton (London)

...The Lord was in the still small voice - 1 Kings 19:12. In what other ways might we hear The Lord speaking? This overview considers the question set, possible ways to interpret it and the need to frame it within an Anglican course context that itself reflects rich, diverse practices of praising, listening to and hearing God. The title of this essay refers to Elijah’s two mountain top experiences on Carmel and Horeb that depict how God speaks in contrasting ways; through spectacular events and displays of power and through a whisper which both calms and rouses the heart. Moving quickly through the story in 1 Kings 19, we see Elijah who has stopped rain, challenge the false prophets of Baal and Asherath to reveal the true God in a fiery showdown on Mount Carmel. After he has ordered the death of the false prophets, Queen Jezebel threatens his life. Elijah, discouraged, flees into the wilderness heading for Mount Horeb (Sinai) a significant place of God’s voice and revelation to Moses, at a key moment in the history of Israel. Perhaps in journeying to Sinai, Elijah hoped for a fresh encounter and revelation of God. Unlike Moses’ experience, God does not partially unveil his countenance. Instead, Elijah hears a still small voice in his cave of refuge, with God asking him what he is doing there. We might imagine that after calling out to God and seeing him work through spectacular events that Elijah would be reassured of God’s infinite power and love. However he is human...

Words: 2906 - Pages: 12

Premium Essay

Academic Standards Sc

...South Carolina Social Studies Academic Standards Mick Zais, Ph.D. State Superintendent of Education South Carolina Department of Education Columbia, South Carolina State Board Approved Document – August 18, 2011 Contents Acknowledgments.......................................................................................................................... iii Introduction .....................................................................................................................................1 Social Studies Standards Page Format .............................................................................................5 Grade-Level Standards for Social Studies Grades K–3 Kindergarten. Foundations of Social Studies: Children as Citizens ...............................................7 Grade 1. Foundations of Social Studies: Families........................................................................12 Grade 2. Foundations of Social Studies: Communities ................................................................17 Grade 3. South Carolina Studies ..................................................................................................22 Grades 4–5 Grade 4. United States Studies to 1865 ........................................................................................29 Grade 5. United States Studies: 1865 to the Present ....................................................................36 Grades 6–8 Grade 6. Early Cultures to 1600...

Words: 38033 - Pages: 153

Free Essay

The Fiftieth Gate

...public events” where memory is defined as “the faculty by which events are recalled or kept in mind”. Thus history and memory interrelate as history can be seen as the contextual justification for memory. “The Fiftieth Gate” is a poignant interweaving of history and memory. The text follows protagonist, Mark Baker an historian, son of Holocaust survivors Genia and Yossl (Joe), on an historical journey through memory, to uncover the origins of his past and act as a catalyst for future generations to also connect with their history. Mark Baker’s journey through history and memory is also executed through his conventional ideas that memory is biased and less valid than history. There are numerous references to the discrepancies between the personal memories of his parents and the documented history Mark as an historian believes. In this way it is apparent that Mark is on a quest for verification, “my facts from the past are different”. This displays the flaw Mark traditionally notes in memory and his need for historical evidence. As responders accompany Mark on his journey, they also encounter the complexity of simultaneously being a son and an historian. This attested via the following when Mark collates his parent’s memories with documented historical evidence “His was a past written on a page…mother couldn’t point to anyone”. This quote represents the way Mark requires documented evidence, history. This is because he believed his father’s memories only when had had evidence...

Words: 23607 - Pages: 95

Premium Essay

Psychology

...Page 1 PSYCHOLOGY IN THE CONTEXT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE • What is ‘psychology’ and why is it so important in the context of health and social care? • What do we mean by ‘health’ and why is psychology central to the effective delivery of health and social care? • What are the main approaches to psychological thinking and research? • Who are psychologists and what do they contribute to the promotion of health and well-being? Introduction This chapter emphasizes the importance of psychology in the context of health and social care. For many years, psychology and the other social sciences were viewed by the medical profession as ‘soft sciences’, interesting but unimportant. With the advent of research into the links between physical and mental states in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries it is now possible to demonstrate that psychology can make a fundamental difference to physical as well as mental health. In this chapter, we explore the nature of psychology and its relevance to health and social care. We outline the different schools of thought and methods of inquiry in psychology. We seek to distinguish between psychology as an academic discipline and popular notions of psychology, and identify professionals whose practice is mainly concerned with the application of psychology. In order to show how psychology can be applied to health and social care, we introduce a family scenario whose characters appear in examples throughout the book. What is psychology...

Words: 6889 - Pages: 28

Premium Essay

Social Identity

...Table of Contents Social Identity………………………………………………………………………….3 Introduction……………………….....................................................................………3 Backgrounds………………………………………………………………….………..4 Social Identity Theory……………………………………………………...………4 - 5 Personal Identity……………………………………………………………………….5 Types of Social Identity………………………………………………….…………6 - 7 Ethnic and National Identities…………………………………………............……6 - 7 Sexual Orientation………………………………………………………..………...…..7 Social Rejection……………………………………………………………………8 - 10 Consequences of Social Identities………………………………………………..10 - 11 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………......……11 References……………………………………………………………………12 - 13 Social Identity Introduction Social identity is similar to how a person identifies themselves in relation to others to what the person has in common.( Social character is like how an individual recognizes themselves in connection to others to what the individual has in as a relatable point.) For example, in similarity of name, religion or ethnicity, gender, age, socio-economic class, professions, relationships and more. Social identity is “a mind-range theory of group membership, self-conception, and group behavior that attributes a causal role to collective self-conception.” (Hogg & Tindale, 2005). Each of us experience communication every day in order to get social identity. Social identities are measured based on the groups people socialize with. Such...

Words: 3145 - Pages: 13

Premium Essay

Philosophical Foundations in Psychology

...The Qualitative Report Volume 14 Number 1 March 2009 61-80 http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR14-1/blanchard.pdf Lived Experiences of Adult Children Who Have a Parent Diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease Amy Blanchard, Jennifer Hodgson, Angela Lamson, and David Dosser East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina Little is known about the experience among adult children who have a parent with Parkinson’s Disease (PD). The purpose of this study was to explore, appreciate, and describe their experiences using a phenomenological methodology. Narratives were collected from seven participants who have a parent diagnosed with PD and analyzed according to Colaizzi’s (1978) phenomenological data analysis method. Seven thematic clusters were identified and an exhaustive description is presented to summarize the essence of their lived experience. The study indicates a strong sense of essential positivism from the participants’ stories, and overall, it seems PD has brought some degree of biological, psychological, socially, and/or spiritual meaning to their lives that they may not have otherwise noticed or experienced. Key Words: Parkinson’s Disease, Phenomenology, Biopsychosocial-spiritual, Adult, Children and Illness Introduction “The bond between mother and child is so deeply rooted in our emotions that we fear to discuss openly anything that threatens the bond” – Glenna Atwood (1991) Establishing links between chronic illnesses and family impact are not novel (e.g., Cooke, McNally...

Words: 9280 - Pages: 38

Free Essay

Art and Story Proceedings 2004

...Arts and the Education of Artists: Art and Story CONTENTS SECTION ONE: Marcel’s Studio Visit with Elstir……………………………………………………….. David Carrier SECTION TWO: Film and Video Narrative Brief Narrative on Film-The Case of John Updike……………………………………. Thomas P. Adler With a Pen of Light …………………………………………………………………… Michael Fink Media and the Message: Does Media Shape or Serve the Story: Visual Storytelling and New Media ……………………………………………………. June Bisantz Evans Visual Literacy: The Language of Cultural Signifiers…………………………………. Tammy Knipp SECTION THREE: Narrative and Fine Art Beyond Illustration: Visual Narrative Strategies in Picasso’s Celestina Prints………… Susan J. Baker and William Novak Narrative, Allegory, and Commentary in Emil Nolde’s Legend: St. Mary of Egypt…… William B. Sieger A Narrative of Belonging: The Art of Beauford Delaney and Glenn Ligon…………… Catherine St. John Art and Narrative Under the Third Reich ……………………………………………… Ashley Labrie 28 15 1 22 25 27 36 43 51 Hopper Stories in an Imaginary Museum……………………………………………. Joseph Stanton SECTION FOUR: Photography and Narrative Black & White: Two Worlds/Two Distinct Stories……………………………………….. Elaine A. King Relinquishing His Own Story: Abandonment and Appropriation in the Edward Weston Narrative………………………………………………………………………….. David Peeler Narrative Stretegies in the Worlds of Jean Le Gac and Sophe Calle…………………….. Stefanie Rentsch SECTION FIVE: Memory Does The History of Western Art Tell a Grand Story?……………………………………...

Words: 117240 - Pages: 469

Premium Essay

Essay

...Clin Soc Work J (2014) 42:323–335 DOI 10.1007/s10615-014-0496-z ORIGINAL PAPER Trauma Through the Life Cycle: A Review of Current Literature Shulamith Lala Ashenberg Straussner Alexandrea Josephine Calnan • Highlight every key term that refers to the following key concepts: 1) "trauma" generally a) "large T trauma" b) "micro-trauma" 2) "resilience" Published online: 31 May 2014 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 Abstract This paper provides an overview of common traumatic events and responses, with a specific focus on the life cycle. It identifies selected ‘‘large T’’ and ‘‘micro’’ traumas encountered during childhood, adulthood and late life, and the concept of resilience. It also identifies the differences in traumatic events and reactions experienced by men compared to women, those related to the experience of immigration, and cross generational transmission of trauma. Descriptions of empirically-supported treatment approaches of traumatized individuals at the different stages of the life cycle are offered. Keywords PTSD Á Large-T and micro-traumas Á Neurobiology Á Gender differences Á Immigrants Á Treatment approaches The past is never dead. It’s not even past. William Faulkner The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. Judith Lewis Herman S. L. A. Straussner (&) Silver School of Social Work, New York University, 1 Washington...

Words: 10490 - Pages: 42