30 minutes...--Armando

I remember them vividly.

The worst thirty minutes of my life. I awoke looking up at the dark sky, unaware of where I was for a brief moment. Then the pain hit me, I felt a sudden nausea as I scrambled to my feet quickly, only to be pulled down by the weight of my body that I couldn’t seem to support for some odd reason. I hadn’t quite worked out exactly what happened until I saw all 17 of my teammates standing over me as if I was some sort of lifeless corpse. “Well, I must be dead,” I thought, little did I know how real that thought would become in a few hours. I tried to call out to my teammates for help but the words couldn’t escape, just as trapped in my mouth as I felt in my lifeless body. Then suddenly I felt my body being lifted and I assumed I was being called up to heaven. I was a little disappointed and relieved to see my coach carrying me on his shoulders between blackouts. My pride being as big as it is, aided me to say my first words, “put… me… down… I’m… okay.” If I could talk, then surely I could walk I thought, but I was wrong, as soon as my coach put me down, I collapsed once more, unconcious. I awoke in my mother’s car frantically searching for my teammates to tell me what was going on with me, but I figured they informed my mother so I tried my very best to english and ask her. Between panting breaths I asked her, “Mom what happened?” She could only reply with a fake smile on her face saying that I got hit on the head pretty hard, but I could visibly see the worry in her eyes.
Slowly regaining consciousness without blackouts I started to try to move my body around testing if my brain still worked since at this point I knew I had a concussion. Next thing I know I’m at the hospital, but I'm not worried, after all, so many athletes get concussions all the time, what's the worst that could happen, right? Wrong. The coach apparently told my mother to take me to the ER since I blacked out for quite some time after the initial hit to my head. Still, I refused to get worried for the sheer sake of my sanity. About two hours had passed since the initial hit and I thought I should be fine to get out of the car and walk to the front desk myself. As soon as I exited the car EVERY symptom came rushing to me: nausea, poor balance, sleepiness, cloudy vision, fatigue, and the worst headache anyone could ever have. I leaned on my mother all the way to the front door that seemed miles away (it was like 50 feet away) occasionally tripping and losing my balance, nearly falling over. Well, looks like I made it to the front desk finally but now they asked me soooooo many questions. Funny enough, none of this physical pain was part of the worst 30 minutes of my life. Anyways, after finishing their quiz they promptly admitted me for a CT scan despite the people who had been waiting for hours before me. I asked the front desk why I was getting priority and what she told started the worst 30 minutes of my life. “Son, the symptoms you are describing are in line with the most severe concussion someone could have and there is a good chance you have a blood clot in your brain.” I’d like to think that I’m no idiot and I knew exactly what this news meant but I asked anyways, “how bad is that?” She did not beat around the bush on this one, she told me that they might need to perform surgery and that I could die with or without the surgery.
Oh.
I sat outside the CT scan room preparing myself for the machine that would tell me if I live or die. All I could do was sit and cry and I could see my mom trying to be strong for me. I prayed and prayed and cried and sat in the room full of people, yet I still felt alone. Looking back on it, maybe I was overreacting, but to hear that there is a good chance that you might die is pretty rough on the mind. The weeping silence lasted 10 minutes in the waiting room, then I was called in for my scan, I finished quickly, left the room and waited the remaining 20 minutes for the results to say I was going to die.
A flood of relief.