Life Changing Experience

Matt Clarck

After spending close to six months in a back brace and not being able to even work or go to school I have learned to not take life for granite. After this near death experience I have learned to live life to the fullest extent. A line from the movie Fight Club has always inspired me to live this way. In the movie Brad Pit tells Edward Norton " It is only after we have lost everything that we are free to do anything."

In my lifetime I have been involved in a lot of sports and other activities. Growing up my friends and I were very involved with bmx. We would all work and go to school while playing other sports and then when summer time came that's all we would do in our free time. A few of my friends were good enough to get sponsored in bmx as well as racing. During the summer before high school we built a track behind the local grocery store were we all would ride dirt and free style.

On this particular day when I was riding home from the track we had built I was hit by a car. I was crossing Parish Avenue in Cedar Lake when a green four door Saturn hit me while I was crossing the street. Upon being hit by the car I flew off of my bike onto the windshield of the car, which I shattered, and then flew about fifteen feet across the pavement. My first reaction was to get up and run to my bike. Although it was hard to see because my glasses were missing after I got hit by the car. My whole right side was covered in road rash from my ankle to the side of my arm. Luckily my neighbor was there and he told me to lay on the grass while he called an ambulance to come to the scene.

When the ambulance arrived the strapped me up and put me into the back of the vehicle. It was the longest ride ever to the hospital and all I could think of is how bad my back and side hurt. While on your way there the two men in the ambulance must have asked me what day of the week it was a million times and when I was born, which I found quite annoying. That night I spent eight hours at the hospital for them to tell me I had fractured my L2 vertebrae in my back and that I would have to go to the chiropractor the next day when I woke up. When I was at the doctor they told me that I would have to wear a back brace for the next four months until my back healed.

My friend came to my house every day and showed my videos of them riding dirt and doing various tricks on the track and jumps they had finished while I was gone. My friends Jeremy, Matt, and Austin all brought me pizza and ice cream almost every day until I was better. Even my principal from school came to visit me at my house. When my back was all healed up I got right back out there and was riding again with my friends.

I have learned a lot from this event, such as that you should not take anything for granted. My friends and family remind me how I could have died from being in an accident like that. Another

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