by Hannah Wolf

The first time I rode in an ambulance wasn’t for any freak accident. Which is somewhat surprising, considering that I have been an accident waiting to happen all my life. With all of the times I’ve fallen, tripped and injured myself, I’m kind of surprised I haven’t ended up in an ambulance sooner.

The first time I nearly avoided a trip to the hospital I was three years old and at my brothers baseball game. I thought I could do a summer sault down the metal bleachers. Let’s just say I fell ten feet onto cement.

I only got more clumsy after that.

I knocked out a tooth when a pogo stick bounced too hard and hit me in the mouth.

I chipped another tooth when I stumbled on a crack in the sidewalk at the zoo.

I wrecked a Segway and narrowly avoided an oncoming car.

I wrecked my bike ten feet away from Ward Parkway during rush hour.

I fell off the back of a moving boat.

I fell down a whole flight of cement stairs.

I swear I broke my arm on an elliptical machine when I was in sixth grade, but no one even believed that was possible so I never actually went to the hospital and got a cast.

The first time I actually made it to the hospital via ambulance was sophomore year of high school. I don’t really even remember it. I just remember waking up with an IV in my arm and having to pee.

It was a pretty hot Thursday in the fall, and I had a cross country meet after school that day. Of course, I left my water bottle at school. I tried to borrow Brie Sandridge’s in advisory, but she wouldn’t let me take her new pink Camelback water bottle (she claims this never happened, but I still blame this whole event on her.)

I was coming down the last hill of the Grandview Invitational meet, and I remember yelling to someone on the sidelines that I couldn’t see straight. Things were pretty blurry and I was definitely struggling to stay on the course. I made it to the flags that led to the finish line; I was a good twenty feet away from actually finishing the race. For the next 5 hours, I even thought I did finish.

But that’s when my dehydration kicked in and I passed out. I gained consciousness again at one point, but was still so out of it that I’m not really sure what happened.

When the paramedics came, they ran a bunch of tests and tried to give me some fluids then. Apparently I was freaking out about them putting any IVs into my arm and told them I hated needles.

I don’t hate needles.

I was probably the most obnoxious teenage girl that they had to deal with. My mom rode with me in the ambulance and said I continued to yell at the paramedics all the way to the hospital, where I yelled at the nurses every time they hooked me up to a new bag of fluid or tested my heart rate.

All this because I didn’t drink water?

I may not be lucky that I’m clumsy (I blame it on being left handed), and I may not be lucky that I’ve suffered some painful falls. But I do consider myself lucky that I have never been seriously hurt. I’m lucky that despite all of these incidents, it took a good 15 years for me to even make it to the hospital. I’m lucky that it was only dehydration that landed me my first ride in an ambulance.