A Journey to Remember

In her own words, Sydney tells her story.






A Journey To Remember
by
Sydney Carlson



It was my last turn to try and make the best round off back tuck on that day of July 17th, 2008, so I put my arms by my ears, my right foot in front of me with my toes pointed and my legs straight. I lifted my leg, put my hands on the beam and kicked my feet over top of my head. It was at that moment when I realized that stinkin left foot was just not going to meet the beam, but even though it wasn’t going to I was still going to try my hardest to use all the power in my right leg to make the back tuck all the way around and stick it and that’s just what I did but unfortunately I missed the all the way around part and landed on my neck. That’s when I heard it, the crunching of my C5 and C6 vertebrae. I wasn’t quite sure what to think, should I yell for help or should I get so frustrated that I could just not contain myself? That’s when I chose to yell for ice and began to stand up when one of my coaches, Kayla Whipple, who is also training to become a paramedic told me to lay down and DON’T MOVE!!! It was at that moment that I began my journey of courage. As the paramedics arrived and put me on the most uncomfortable board EVER it was pretty near impossible to have positive thoughts but all I could do was try and just think that everything would be ok. Before I knew it I was being released from the hospital and everything was going to be ok (or so I thought). So there we went, back to the gym to let every one know I was going to be ok. As I showed everyone my scrapbook pages that I planned to enter in the stampede, that’s when we got the call to get our butts back to the hospital (as Eva would say). Oh good lord did I have to pee so badly, and that’s when the bad news came, they were going to stick a catheter up there!!! Literately I thought it was the worst thing ever until I got the news that I had broken my neck. So this was it, all those times climbing on the fence and the trees at my Grandma and Grandpa’s house with Grandma yelling at me that I was going to fall and break my neck and it just so happened it wasn’t the fence or the trees, it was the beam. So they rushed me to the Alberta Children’s Hospital in Calgary by air ambulance, where I thought I was going to have the world’s worst experience there, but being there with my wonderful nurses Heather, Stephanie, and all the other nurses and being around all the sick children just made me realize how much we take for granted in life. After a horrible sleep that night the doctor came into my room with the news that seemed horrible but could, in the end possibly save my life, I was going to have to wear a halo. So here I am halo and all enjoying life to what right now is it’s fullest! There are a few good things about it though; I don’t have to pay for my cell phone for 5 or 6 months, I get out of carrying groceries for a while, and a lot more, and even though there are more bad things than good things all I can do is think positive and this will all be over in the blink of and eye. Like I said on my first walk in the hospital after the incident “whatever it takes”. And now when Grandma yells after me saying “you are going to fall and break your neck,” I can just say it has already been done. And even though most people think I am absolutely insane for going back to gymnastics I plan to go back and put my heart and soul back into it and “SHOW EM WHAT IM MADE OF!!!!”