Have you ever had a challenge when you needed to persevere? Maybe you had to try to get back to your normal life, piece by piece. I know I’ve had that very instance happen to me. It was an injury that was so bad that it took over a year to have it fixed. 

     It was mid-winter, and everything was frigid. My brother wanted to go sledding.  “Sure, let's do it,” my dad told my brother, clearly excited to get out of the house.

     The polar hill was coated in ice from the top to bottom. Then, in an instant, my thoughts of injuries erupted from my conscience toward my mind. The thought made me gag.   “I’m not going to be able to sled down this. Too icy,” I told my dad. I was overwhelmed by the immense hill. 

     “Go play, have fun,” my dad said in a kind tone. I just shrugged and started to build a snowman. After my third snowman, I started to get fatigued, so I slid a few feet down a hill to get to the iced pond. Sliding on the ice made me feel as if I would fall. The ice chilled against the skin, almost making it hurt. I tapped my foot on the iced pond gingerly so I wouldn't fall in. I realized that I was able to stand on the ice and slowly made my way onto the icy pool. I started to drift along the ice gently. I began to hear footsteps and saw my brother and his friends coming towards me, so I hastily made my way off the ice and acted as if I was mature. 

     Then we started to wrestle. By three to one, I knew I had lost already; I found myself pinned to the ice. So as a normal, younger sibling would do, I started kicking. Everywhere. My eyes squeezed shut so there was no way of me knowing that I had kicked my brother. Something then flew at me, at my face. My body flew up, one hand covering my left eye, the other holding me up. At that point all I knew how to do was scream and cry. I looked around to see what hit me, but what I saw was a stick. A short, thick, stick. 

     My cries got louder and louder, but my dad could not hear them. I yelled to one of my brother's friends to get my dad and their mom. He rushed to the top of the hill, and my dad looked down.  My dad slid down the hill at the speed of light, dashed towards me and gave me a bear hug.  “Are you okay? What happened?” my dad said frantically and frightened. “Can you open your eye?” he implored before I could even get a word out.

  "It hurts, I don-sniff- don’t thi- sniff-think I ca-sniff-can,” I answered, stumbling on every word.

   “Please try,” my dad insisted, his final question. I took a big breath and tried to open my left eye. I started to cry more and more, tears escaping my eye. I got faster, trying to get over with it, but when I got it open, there was nothing in front of me. I started to sob.

     “I can’t see! I can’t!”  My mouth would only produce those words. I could hear my brother sobbing, crying for help. To me, my world had just crashed and burned. 

     “There’s blood in her eye.” I could hear the whispers. My heart sank. The tears kept coming. 

     We ran to the car, faster than light itself.  “Wher-where a-are we goi-going?” I mumbled, still tripping on my words. My tears by now were gone, but my brother’s had just begun.

     “Urgent Care,” my dad responded quickly. 

     We didn’t walk; we ran into the building.

     “We don’t do check ups, sorry.”

     Next one.

     “We only do covid shots.”

     Third time's a charm. This time I didn’t run; I walked.

     “Yea, that’s pretty swollen, you should go to the hospital,” the man explained.  At that moment I wanted to roll my eyes so far back that I would be able to see behind me. But because of the problem with my eye I couldn’t. When we walked out of Urgent Care, the bright snow burned into my face as we went back to the car.

     All bland to me. The cold, tedious, beige walls. The red, one-person chairs.  The secretary with a screen in front of her for covid safety. Everything was lifeless, stale, dull. 

     The first ten minutes were brutal. The pain in my eye was tearing in my mind. I sat emotionless on the small chair, impatient, bitter, and cramped. My face was numb from the frosty day. 20 minutes in and my mom finally got to the hospital. All I could do was wait more, talk to Mom and Dad, and try to open my eye. Then the 30 minute mark. We got called in after a long 30 minutes, which was surprising to me. 

     While my mom and brother went to my mom’s house, my dad and I stayed at the hospital.  I got my blood drawn, then for the next 30 minutes Dad and I watched American Ninja Warrior. Turns out that  American Ninja Warrior is very suspenseful.  I eventually fell asleep for the next hour or two. When I woke up I was very tired and hungry, but they didn’t want me to eat. 

     Dad and I talked for another hour or two before a doctor came in and wanted me to try to open my eye. I did as she said, and I tried to open it; I got it open, and I could see shapes, which was better than before. But everything was still very blurry. After about ten more minutes of talking to my dad I fell back asleep. 

     When I woke up at about 6 or 7 o’clock, I thought it was kind of late, so I wanted to go back to sleep. When I woke up again my dad had told me that the doctors didn’t want me falling asleep again. All I could do was sit in that bed and watch stupid American Ninja Warrior. I couldn’t even roll my eyes! After crying so much, I was so exhausted.  I just had a traumatic experience that affected my life exponentially; sleep was literally the only thing that helped, but they didn’t want me to sleep. Then my stomach was shaking; they wouldn’t let me have food, so I asked for a lot of water. The next time I tried to open my eye, I was able to see a little better, and I started to look out of it a lot more. Before we were about to leave, it was about 10 to 12 at night at this point, but right before we were about to leave the doctor brought me into another room. They put numbing drops in my eyes and shined a light on them. 

     The doctor gave us an address and a number for an eye doctor. My dad thanked them, so did I, and we left. My dad and I were still both hungry, so we stopped at a gas station on our way home and got Combos. We both were relieved that we could finally get food. 

     For the next few months I went through so much.  I had to do numbing eye drops twice in both eyes a day. These drops made me drowsy all the time.  Every art class, I fell asleep. My dad and I didn’t know that the side effects of these drops was me always dozing off. Another thing I had to go through was sleeping while sitting up.  I had to do this for about three weeks. I had to sleep like this because of the pressure in my eye. This was difficult for me because I could never get into a comfortable position. My back would always ache in the morning. It was just plain inconvenient! 

     Don’t even get me started on the eye patch. Que eye roll. The doctor made me wear this eye patch every night. We had to actually “tape” this patch to my eye. Each night, we had special tape that we taped over the eye patch. In the mornings, I had to rip the tape off.  I’m pretty sure I lost a few eyebrow hairs. I missed school for about a week and a half. I wasn’t allowed to use my phone, and I wanted to watch TV; I had to use the Television.  The appointments started off every single day, and then they progressively got further and further apart, so I only had to go once a week. Then it was once a month for a long time. Then finally, once a year. 

     There was so much. I had so much happen in one day, and it took over a year to get back to my normal routine.  Perseverance is a way to get through life. With it, through the bad and good you can get through any and everything.

-Peyton H.