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My advice for a newly injury person is to be an advocate for self and not give up.
and found some lunch at a Subway restaurant in a little plaza not too far from the beach. We ordered our sandwiches, came back to the car to get our ice chest, towels, sunscreen, etc. and went to go find a spot on the beach. We found a good spot, ate our sandwiches quickly, and then hopped into the ocean for some swimming and body surfing. At that point, I had swam in the ocean dozens of times throughout my life, and as a swimmer in high school, I knew how to get in the best position to body surf. After gliding back to the shore from riding a good wave, I decided to roll around in the sand and mimic a funny picture I once saw on Twitter. My dad thought it was a funny pose, so he decided to take a picture. That photo ended up being the last photo we took on that vacation. After he took the photo and after the wave had splashed over my body, I decided to jump up and run back into the ocean to get all of the sand off of my body. So I took about six or seven steps, saw that the wave coming in towards me was a little too big to be able to jump over, and decided that I would dive through the wave, again like I had done many times before. Unfortunately, the wave had already broke and was flattening out as I jumped with my hands out in front of me. I still remember the exact pattern of the breaking wave as I closed my eyes. As I hit my head on the smooth sandbar, I felt an entire shock go through my body. It was as if I had hit my funny bone in my elbow on the corner of something, but the feeling I felt was much more intense and started from my neck and spread to all four of my limbs almost instantly. At first, I thought I had gotten the wind knocked out of me, but as I tried to push myself up with my arms, I found that I could not move them. As I was face down and had sucked in a lot of water, I tried rolling over and kicking my legs, but that didn’t work either. At this point, I was still confused as to what happened, but I was fully conscious and knew that I should not panic and to hold my breath for as long as possible. Again, as a swimmer, I was able to actually relax since I was very comfortable in water. At this point, I tried bobbing my head in order to get some air, but I ended up just sucking in more ocean water. When that didn’t work, I put my head back down in the water so that I could conserve whatever oxygen I had left. This is when the thought crept into my mind that I was going to die, that I was going to drown. My late grandfather came to the forefront of my thoughts, as I wondered what people would think of me at my funeral as I did for him just the summer prior. My thoughts were then interrupted by the piercing screams of my youngest sister, Ashley, who was swimming in the ocean right next to me when I dove in. I felt another wave roll over my back since I was still face-down, but not a second after, another wave ended up flipping me over onto my back so that I could finally breathe. The sun felt super hot on my face and the pain of my muscles contracting to protect my spinal cord began to say I am, and I started to feel extreme discomfort. I felt someone touch me, I don’t remember if it was my sister or not, but then I fell two hands grab from under my arm pits and pull me up onto the sand. At this point, I was groaning in pain, and after a wave splashed over me, I kind of barked at the people (who were down by my side to see if I was all right) to pull me up further on the beach so that the waves wouldn’t splash over my face and I wouldn’t suck in my water. I heard someone say to call 911, as someone got an umbrella to shade my face from the sun. By this point, my dad had found out what happened and he ran over to help. As an athletic trainer for many years, he assessed me and gave me a bit of a fright when he squeezed my feet and asked me if I could
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