I never knew what real pain was until I ended up in the ER. Being 9 and one of the youngest girls on the team, I was always the test dummy.And that’s not always fun. It was interesting to see the type of things my coaches had me do. It was such an extreme and dangerous stunt that I had gotten my shoulder pulled out its socket. I know that my coaches didn’t mean to do that but it still didn’t help the fact that I did get hurt.

Holly (my coach) is always trying to do things to make my team better, and that means harder stunts.”Okay, girls. Since we are trying to max out our score sheet, we need a stunt that is more difficult. Brandi, you and your group can go up there to try this out.” As we were going up there Holly said,”You girls are going to do a twist up to a full, tick-tock down into a heel stretch, and do a quarter turn cradle.”
“Ummm, Holly can we try that step by step?” I asked with fear in my voice.

“Sure that is okay. Just try your hardest.”

Alyssa my back spot was going over our counts,”5,6,7,8” Once she said that I was up in the air, doing the thing I did best. I fell, A LOT!! And all 3 of my coaches kept on yelling at us to do it right, but for us it was way too hard.

I was just about to do the tick-tock, and I was very wobbly, I was looking down, and my coach yelled,”Come on Brandi! You can do better than this!”
“It is too hard for me to do, have somebody else do it.” I yelled back as I was coming down.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I know you can do this, you just need a little practice.Here lets take a break, and run the routine a couple of times and then we can work on it some more. Okay?”
“Fine.” We didn’t work on it that much for the rest of the night, because all the coaches were yelling at us to ‘be sharp’ or ‘hit those jumps’ or ‘you can do better than this’, and it went on like this for almost rest of the practice. The girls on my team were tired, sweaty, mad, and stressed. By the last 30 minutes of practice, nobody was hitting as stunts, we were all sloppy, and we just didn’t care for this practice anymore.

“Okay that was a very good practice,”Holly ssid with a smile on her face. “brandi can you and your stunt group work on that stunt again?”
“Sure,” we all said with no enthusiasm in our voices at all! The girls under me were tired, I was tired, so we didn’t try hard at all, and that was a stupid thing to do.I fell, but not just that little fall that we were doing earlier. No, I fell over ALL the girls head, and since we were right by the edge of the matt, I was going head first towards the hardwood floor. In those split seconds that I was falling I thought to myself, “Man, this is going to be very bad...”

I’m glad Alyssa was there because she saved me, even though I was in excruciating pain she still saved me. My eyes were full of tears,and my cheeks were wet from them. As I lay there I hear, “Sweetie are you okay?” and “Oh my gosh what just happened?” and everything else like that. Alyssa was right there comforting me saying that she was sorry, and that she felt very bad that that just happened. I tried to tell her everything was okay, but when I tried to get up knew that it wasn’t.

My head had hurt very bad. My arm went numb the second I tried to move it, the only thing I felt on that arm was something being pinched in my shoulder. Luckily there was a nurse there that came over to check on me before I was able to move, she wrapped my arm up against my body and gave me ice for my head, arm, neck, and shoulder. And I was taken to the ER.

By the time I got to the ER, it was already 9:30 at night, and I was tired. I slept on my dad’s lap until the doctor called me in, “Brandi Schott, we are ready for you,” Mr. Doctor said. I had just finally stopped crying, because I wasn’t moving, and I had to move again. Just great, I started crying again. This was terrible because my head already hurt and the crying made it worse.

A he was taking a look at my arm and shoulder, he was pulling, stretching, and moving my arm many places. He asked if I was okay with it and I lied. I wasn’t okay with him hurting me more but it was to make me better so I said yes.”Okay Brandi, we are going to take an x-ray of you, just to make sure nothing is broken. But you are going to have to sit in some very uncomfortable position, that will make you shoulder hurt, but you will have to stay sill. Okay?”

“That fine.” I laid down on the hard, cold metal bed and as he is moving my arm into the place he wants it, that hurt so much. As he did that a couple of time, the pain is getting worse and worse. By the very last time that he moved my arm, we both hear a pop. I screamed in terror not only because of the pain but also the thought that it would get even worse. So the doctor takes a quick x-ray, looks at it, before he lets me move and that had to be an hour or so.

By that time it was 2:30 in the morning and I was still on the x-ray table, still haven’t moved, and I was sleeping, my dd was watching over me. Finally the doctor came in and said that pop was the shoulder popping back into the socket. “SO that pop that we heard was the shoulder popping back into the socket but it is only back in the socket.. Now, all we have to do is finish popping that sucker into the right place. It will be very painful so would you like to take some pain medicine now or later?”
“Can I do both?” I asked with fear in my voice.

“Yes, if it is okay with your dad, because you would have to take two different kinds of meds, and then you would have to stay an hour or so after it being popped back into place.”

“It is fine with me,” my dad, “I will just have to call your brother to tell him we will be a while still.” This entire time that I had gotten hurt until now, I had completely forgotten my brother. I wonder what he is doing!?!?

“Okay let me go get the other nurses to help and I will be right back.”

Did you know, that getting things popped back into the right spot is one of the most excruciating thing a nine year old girl would have to go through? Even with all the pain medicine I still was crying. There was about 5 people around me,my dad was there (of course), one nurse was keeping me from moving, another was there by my shoulder keeping that still, the doctor himself, and someone there to take the x-ray after it had gotten popped back in.

After that fiasco was over the doctor gave me my own room to stay in until I was able to go home. The reason that they wanted to keep my a while after is because first I took two different kinds of meds, second I had a concussion, and third to see if my shoulder would stay in the socket instead of popping back out. They woke me up every 1-2 hours, I didn’t know why but my dad explained it to me.

Early the next day I was able to go home. They woke me up, and helped me get my jacket on, and I got to ride a wheel chair. It was so fun, especially because I didn’t want to walk around the hospital with a hurt shoulder and a concussion at 3 in the morning. When I got home, I went to bed and slept. My dad let me stay home from school, but he let me go to cheer practice that night.

As I walked into practice everybody yelled out,”I love you.”

“How are you doing? You know that you didn’t have to come tonight?” Holly said with gilt in her eyes.

“ I know I didn’t, but I wanted to. I wanted to tell everyone how I was doing, and answer any questions that they had,” I answered back.”But I’m not able to do cheerleading for 3 weeks so I can’t do the competition next weekend, I hope that is okay.”

“It is completely okay, I’m just sorry that I made you do that, I didn’t think that someone would get hurt.”

“Its okay, I love doing all the new stuff that you have me do. It is SOOOOOO fun just next time can I have a spot?”

“Of course you can have a spot next time, and hopefully there will not be a next time for this bad accident.

After 3 weeks of sitting there watching everybody else cheer, I finally got to cheer again, and I pretended like nothing ever happened. I promised myself that I would never lose my focus, in the middle of stunting ever again!