My freshman year of high school, I was drafted to become a water polo goalie. Since I came into the season knowing absolutely nothing about being a goalie, the Junior goalie, Hailey, taught me everything about the game. Hailey told me that “as a goalie, you are the last defence, not the only defence. You should never beat yourself up about missing a ball, it’s not all on you. Remember that you are in a team.” What Hailey told me was one of the things I held on to in the months that followed. My love of water polo didn’t lessen as I got to know the sport; If anything, it grew.
The very first tournament we went to, we played a team that I thought was really awful. All of their shots were easy to block. At the end of the tournament, coach Felicity was talking to us in a team huddle, and she said, “everyone did great, but I think we all know that the MVP of the tournament was Alex.” The team made me get in the center of the circle and we group hugged. That was when I realized, I was actually good at water polo. Actually, I was 3rd in the state for JV goalies in the beginning of the season, despite never having played before that year.
Then, at the last JV tournament of the year, we played Ann Arbor Huron. Huron had a good water polo team, but not the best. I was doing really well, and blocking a lot of shots. We were down by one point in the 4th quarter, and Huron had the ball. One of Huron’s players came up to shoot; she was a tall Indian girl, but she was rather small and I hadn’t seen her as much of a threat during the game. She was shooting from a wing, and was about 6 or 7 feet away from me. I was up and ready to block the shot. All of her previous shots had been off-cage, so of course that was what I was expecting from her.
She pulls back her arm to shoot, and I am ready to block. The ball goes sailing straight at my face, and hits my nose directly. Now, this is not uncommon. I get hit in the face during practice often; it is something I just shake off. I grabbed the ball and threw it to Laura, my go-to person after I block a shot. My nose stung a little, but I didn’t think much of it. I watched as my team moved the ball down towards the Huron goal. “Go deep, Laura!” I screamed with a voice hoarse from hours of screaming. “Megan’s open! Pass to Megan!”
My lips felt wet, so I wiped them with the back of my hand (figuring it was water). Much to my surprise, my hand came back from my face covered in red blood. It clicked in my mind, my nose was bleeding. Still, I wasn’t in any pain; the adrenaline masked any emotional response to the situation I had. I called for Felicity, not wanting to leave the goal open, since I was unsure if the refs would count a goal for Huron if they shot while I wasn’t even in the pool. “Felicity! Felicity!” I tried to scream, but because she was watching the other players on the offensive side of the pool, she didn’t hear me. I began to cry, not from the pain of my nose so much as the fact that no one noticed me. I began to swim toward the side of the pool, still screaming for Felicity’s attention. As I got to the side, she looked down. Her face contorted and she called to the referee for a time out. I climbed out of the pool, and as I did, I noticed a large pool of blood accumulating on the pool deck.
Our side of the pool was right next to the boys locker room. The girls locker room was by the direct opposite corner. Without a second thought, I ran into the boys locker room. 3 players, Felicity, a mom, and the referee all ran in after me (neither of my parents were at the game). The ref said it was the bloodiest nose he had ever seen. It hurt like I imagine foot binding hurt Chinese girls; it throbbed like an animated GIF of a heart. After handfuls of paper towels, bags of ice, and 15 minutes, the bleeding subsided. The players and Felicity had gone back out to the game, and the referee went out to continue refereeing. The mom of one of the players sat with me until the bleeding completely stopped. After I was done bleeding, I went to the mirror. My face was a war zone. I spent at least 5 minutes using the abrasive paper towels to scrub the blood off my face. Once I looked presentable, I took my bag of ice and walked back onto the pool deck. We had lost the game. I found the team in a huddle in the hallway, and everyone hugged me and asked if I was okay. No players had seen it start bleeding, although a few parents came up to me and said they saw me get hit, but didn’t realize how serious it was. After convincing everyone that I was fine, and retelling my story more times than Obama told Americans that he was not a terrorist, I got changed and went home. I kept a bag of ice on my nose until I left the tournament, and it wasn’t until I got home that someone noticed how far my nose had deviated to the right. My mom wanted to take me to the emergency room right then, but I told her that I had to finish the tournament, since we had two more games the next day. I woke up the next morning in an abundance of pain. I played the whole rest of the tournament, however, proving that I really do finish what needs to be done, and as soon as it was over we went to the ER. It turns out that my nose was broken, and my septum had deviated far to one side, which could produce a breathing problem in the future.
About a week later I went into surgery to move my nose back into place. I went into the hospital and they put a black “x” on my nose. I talked to the anesthesiologist and asked him how much it’d hurt. He told me that I wouldn’t remember anything the next day. Right as he gave me the anesthesia, he told me to try and remember the word “platypus”. Obviously I remember it, but I don’t remember anything about the actual surgery.
I woke up in a bed with the nurse looking over me. I had tubes inside my nose that had to be in there for the next week. When I awoke, I was swimming in a sea of anesthesia. Moving my head was as hard as lifting a house. To pick my arm up, or to open my mouth to call for the nurse was unfathomable. I started crying from the pain and from the sudden onset of helplessness, a feeling I detest. The nurse gave me a Popsicle (the absolutely least comfortable thing in the world for me to do immediately after the surgery was to make the mouth shape that is required to eat a Popsicle). She looked at me crying and asked, “on a scale of 1 to 10, what is your pain level now?”
I choked out a barely audible, “9,” and she looked at her charts. She raised my morphine and then asked my pain level again. There hadn’t been a change.
I could feel myself drifting in and out of consciousness for the next eternity. When I woke up, she was looking at her charts and sweetly addressed me like one would address a wounded puppy. “Hello, honey. How are you feeling?” she asked. I attempted a response, but I don’t think she noticed because she continued. “I can’t raise your morphine levels, because they’re as high as is legally allowed for minors. We’re gonna try another pain killer, okay?” I tried to nod. “You’re dad is right here.” I mustered all the strength I could and turned my head to the other side, where she was pointing. My dad was sitting next to my bedside, reading comic books.
For the next few hours, I lay in that hospital bed wondering how I could get out of that misery. At some point I was brought another Popsicle. My strength began to return little by little. As I began to feel better, the nurse came back and talked of letting me head home. It was finally decided that I would be sent home and could continue to rest there. I asked my dad for my clothes to change back into. He handed me a bundle of fabric, and I slowly began to change out of my hospital gown.
“Umm, dad, where are my pants?” I asked.
“Aren’t they in the pile?”
“No... I put everything on that you gave me. No pants...” I couldn’t believe this was happening.
“Oh here they are!” They were on the floor underneath his chair.
I put the pants on, and the nurse brought me a wheel chair.
One of the most humbling experiences I have ever been through, was that trip out of the hospital. I have never before in my memorable life had to rely on someone so completely. I wasn’t able to stand from the weak and tired feeling from the anesthesia accompanied by the slight dizziness produced by the pain medications. Even thinking about using my arms to push the wheel chair made my head hurt. I was completely dependant on my father.
I spent the next 4 days leaving my bed only to use the bathroom. I slept 90% of the day, with occasional text messages to my friends and occasional conversations with my parents and my sister. I was forced to wake up every 2 hours (even in the night time) to take more pain killers. My family rallied around my bedside, bringing me food and water and ice cream. They told me repeatedly that they would understand if I never played goalie again, and that they thought it was completely reasonable to want to stop. However, this incident fueled me to enjoy being a goalie more. Because I’ve been through this painful situation, I am less afraid to be hit in the face, which makes me a less hesitant goalie. My coach trusts me, because she knows I can push through adversity and that I care a lot about the game. Overall, this may have been the best thing that could’ve happened to my water polo career.
