It is currently the last weekend of July 2014, its hot, humid, and there are so many fun things going on, little did I know in an hour I would be lying unconscious in an emergency room.  Today is my main day of riding for the Polk County Fair.  The main events up that they have today are English equitation, Hunter Jumper, and English Hunt seat. These are my favorite classes to participate in and I was excited for today.

  Normally on days like these I had only one worry and it was to win, and my previous horse made that a very easy accomplishment.  Why was this year different for me?  This was the year I brought my horse, a horse that was completely mine.  She was four years old and Green Broke, to be green broke means they have had a saddle on them before, someone has been on their back before, and they know how to walk forwards in a straight line, that’s about it.  She was extremely new to this whole riding and showing situation, not sure if she liked it yet either.  There were so many activities going on, so much commotion, and too many distractions.   

To start off the day I go into her stall, grab my brushes and hair supplies, and start going crazy.  I didn’t have as much time as I would like to get her looking in tip top shape, but I have learned in past years to work with what you’ve got.  So, I brush he down good, even though the previous night I gave her a bath, but she decided to lay down in her stall which resulted in her being almost just as dirty.  So, I brushed her down as best as I could, I cleaned out her feet, polished them and started working my way back.  Finally, it’s time to work on her mane and tail this is my favorite part.  I lather her tail up with leave-in-conditioner and start detangling.  This takes me about 10 minutes to do.  The one thing I love about English showing is I’m allowed to braid her tail and mane, it to me always ties the look together.  I braid her tail in a fishtail French braid, tie it off then complete the same look to the mane.

 Now that she is all dolled-up, I put her halter on, grab my lunge line and head out to the arena.  The purpose of lunging is to help her get her energy out, and all her bucks out so they don’t occur when I’m on her back.  I thought that I had lunged her for long enough, but sadly I was mistaken.

I put her back in her stall so she can eat her breakfast and maybe fit a nap in, because I’m hoping to do the same.  I go back to my camper, eat my breakfast, take as short nap, then start to get ready for the day.  When showing in the English riding style there is a very strict dress code.  You must wear a long sleeve collared shirt, made of like dress shirt material.  Breeches which are tight either black, white or tan pants.   Then the two most eye catching pieces of the outfit, a tall black knee-high boots that zip all the way up ,and a long black shoulder padded coat with a long flap in the back that you flip out when you are riding.  This gives the effect of good posture and stillness when riding, which is what judges look for.  I put a little makeup on and put my hair up in a low tight bun at the nape of my neck.  I have this very pretty scrunchie like hair piece with jewels.  I think that it adds a little finishing touch.  Now that I am all dressed, I tell my mom where I’m going, grab my tea and head out the camper door! 

Now it’s busy both arenas are full, even though we are only supposed to be warming up in the practice arena but not many people here listen to rules like that when showing time comes around.  I grab my horse, and I grab my stool because she’s so big and I’m so short I need a stool to saddle her and to mount.

 She’s all saddled up, I grab my helmet and hang my jacket on the post because mind you, it’s 82 degrees at 8:30 in the morning.  I mount my horse, and she is fresh. This means she still has a lot of energy and her attitude is strong this morning.  So, my solution to this problem was to just ride it out, ride out the bucks, head pulling, and little burst of speed.  About an hour has passed and even more people have emerged from their current living spaces, well people and horses of course.  Where am I? Yep, … you guessed it, still riding out these little quirks and challenges she keeps throwing my way. 

There’s only about 15 minutes tell my class is up.  I think she seems fine now, so I go and pull up next to my friends by the railing and we sit and watch the current riders show.

Two classes pass by, and now it’s my turn, my first class of the day.  They announce, “For lot 102, we are looking for rider Daedyn Pearce, entry 404, I repeat Daedyn Pearce entry 404.” I get ready to enter, and I hear a familiar voice yell “Daedyn, Daedyn wait don’t go in there yet!”  I stop abruptly and turn to see my mom running towards me with my jacket already to go, she got my numbers pinned on and ironed it.  I smile at her; she tells me “Good luck, pumpkin, I love you” and kisses me on the cheek. 

I enter the arena and they come over the loud speaker again to announce, “Looks like this lot is closed, entry 404 is the only rider we are expecting in this class.” 

I think to myself “well this should be easy I just have to not fall off and ride as good as I can, and it’s a blue ribbon just like that.”  Little did I know I was jinxing myself. 

I am now into the arena; the gate is closed and it’s just me to this extremely large arena.  At this moment I thought to myself, “alright, here we go, it’s just Indie and I against the world.  We can do this, we’ve got this.”  The judge puts up her hands to signal to the announcer to tell me to start tracking counter-clockwise, around the arena.  We’re walking and she’s being a little pushy, but I try my best to keep going.   We make it almost all the way around the arena, and come upon the railing and she spooks, this means that she jumps away because she fears something.  This is a small one but still I can sense that she fears this area there must be something over there that she can smell or see, that I can’t.  Something is strange though, because other horses that have been in the arena showing today have feared this side of the arena also. So to try to regain her attention on me I say, “Easyyyyyyy, eassyyyyy indie, you’re going to be ok, easyyyyyyy.” 

I say this to make her focus on me, not whatever is going on around us and this benefits me by making me breathe.  I have a tendency of not breathing when I show which makes me tense then reflects onto my horse.

 We proceed on and by this time we are long trotting around the arena, and the judges send another signal to the announcer and I already know what she is going to say so I prepare myself for it. As I gather myself I notice a bright green tent start rolling towards the arena, but people are running after it and soon catch it, thankfully I don’t think indie noticed, or so I thought.   The announcer comes over the loud speaker and says, “Please put your horse into a canter, please canter.”  I pick up my reins, adjust my seat, kick with my outside leg, and ask her to canter.

 Confused… this is my only emotion currently, how did I get here? Why are all these people around me? Why is my mom crying? Where’s my horse? And why in the world are they asking me what year it is and who the current president is?  What is going on? I try to sit up and I can’t move, mainly because I can’t feel anything besides my head.

 The EMT, I think asked me to squeeze his hand so I did but for some reason he kept repeating himself, I soon found out that I wasn’t squeezing at all, I couldn’t put any pressure on him.  So as soon as that happened, they put a neck stabilizer on me, rolled me on a stretcher, and started making their way across the whole arena.  This was one of the coolest feelings ever, because my neck was straight up so all I could see was the sky and I was just drifting it felt like I was just floating in the sky.

 I closed my eyes then, the next thing I know I’m somehow in an ambulance, I try to talk to my mom however she couldn’t hear me at first over the sirens.  I get her attention when I let out a squeal of pain. Which I am unable to move my head to see where its coming from, but I manage to get a glimpse of who or what it is.  It is an EMT it is stabbing me with a needle and my count is at four times, now four is usually my lucky number, but currently its not feeling so lucky for me.  The guy who is trying to get my vein still has not succeeded so the other lady come over and I was so released she gets it her first try.  At this point I didn’t care who got It, I was just done with the whole poking situation.

 They inject me with morphine, might I add that stuff is amazing I could feel any pain anymore, well I could really feel anything anymore, but hey whatever works right. 

We finally arrive to the hospital, but all I really care about right now is where is my horse.  Is she okay, who has her, did they give her some water and help her cool down?   

Anyways, I am currently getting rolled into my own special room.  At this point with all things being pumped through my body, I am feeling pretty good.  They slide me onto the bed and push the button to raise the bed up so I can see, and I totally forgot.  This was my grandmas first time ever coming to see me ride, because she is so deathly afraid of horses.  I thought to myself, “Well, this really helps the situation.”; she probably thinks my mom is crazy for letting me go anywhere near these animals.

Before I can even start a conversation with mom to see how she’s feeling, and if she’s okay, nurses come in and roll me right back out.  I’m just being wheeled around everywhere.  I remember thinking to myself, “jeepers they’re just pushing me around whereever they want, where can I can a sandwich or maybe some eggs, I do really love eggs?” 

Uggggg, I fell sleep again, you know this is really getting annoying. Now look where I am, I’m in some weird donut, tube looking thing.  I have some pretty stylish headphones on, but I can still hear this machine its loud.  This machine keeps sliding me in and out, I think that it’s either taking pictures, or doing a scan of some sort.  Well I am finally done with this, so I think they are wheeling me back to my very luxurious room! 

I am wheeled back in, and they park me there, I say, “Good Afternoon, Pamela, how are you doing this fine evening.” (Pamela is my mom by the way). She didn’t think that was very funny, she was more worried about if I had brain damage or something. 

Yay, more people are coming to see me, here comes my sister and her boyfriend that is my favorite, oh, there’s tori, our family friend.  This is pretty cool.  Of course, the Doctor must walk in and put a serious mood over everyone, boring. 

He starts talking to my mom using big words, I could tell she couldn’t understand everything he was saying so I piped up and asked him to please simplify it for me.  I thought,” Don’t worry mom, I was struggling to.”  He said I have bruise shoulders, hips, and knees.  The main thing he said that kind of scared me and made me realize how serious this is was about an injury I could have inquired.  He said, “Daedyn you are very lucky, and should be thankful your mother requires you to wear your helmet, because with out is there is an 89% chance that you would have been left with brain damage.”  This was honestly one of the scariest things someone has ever said to me in my life.   I couldn’t imagine my life with out being able to ride my horse.   

One of the main things that resulted out of this accident is I now have a broken clip in my spinal cord, and a sliding disk that causes a pinched nerve. Let me tell you this is no fun at all and causes a lot of unneeded difficulty in my normal every day life. 

Anyways, they wheeled me off for more testing but after that’s done, I’m back in my room they give me one more dose of morphine and they give me prescription pain killers, and muscle relaxants, and send them to St. Croix Walmart.  I begged my mom to let me go back to the fair and still be able to hang out, obviously not ride, but still be involved and hang out with all my friends.  Finally, she gave in and said yes because our camper was still there.  We get back to the fairgrounds, and my sister is holding my arm walking me around because I’m still a little uneasy and it feels like I just started walking for the first time a few hours ago.  People are coming up to me and giving me hugs, some even crying when they see me, and know that I am okay.  I make my way back to the camper and in there are my two best friends and they have a little box, but first I notice that they have been crying a lot and both let out a breath of ease when I walk in.  They both give me a hug simultaneously, and we all laugh. I sit down and they hand me this box, I open quickly and instantly puts me in tears, it’s a beautiful diamond necklace horse shoe, which I still wear to this day.  I burst out into tears which calls for another hugging session. 

I crack open the camper door and get an amazing whiff of grilled pork chops and instantly this is all my mind can focus on.  I ask my mom if we can walk over there, not knowing that she would nominate my friends as my designated babysitters.  I know wasn’t allowed to go on any fair rides and couldn’t stay out in the sun for more then a few hours at a time.  Which the fair rides weren’t to much of a problem and I understood because of my concussion but the sun, I thought “Come on mom, please?”

I later understood why she said this also, I tire very easy and ran out of energy fast, and they sun was not a helping factor. 

She finally agrees and we walk there, slowly but I was determined to get that pork chop.  We make it there in about double the time it would normally take me, but it was so worth it.  I buy a pork chop and an ice-cold water.  I grab the bottle of water, and it stings when it comes on contact with my warm skin, so I quickly set it down and start in on my amazingly juicy and flavorful pork chop.  This wasn’t how I imagined my fair time going.  Especially that I wasn’t allowed to ride any horses.  Which I very quickly broke this rule by warming up some of my friend’s horses before they would show. I knew for a fact that I was going to make the best of it, and not waste my time here.