“Christmas Wish” by Jessica Weishaar

It began the Christmas of 1992 when I asked for a horse. I was a normal twelve year old who was always dreaming. I never had a normal wish for Christmas. One year I even asked Santa Claus to bring me one of his reindeer. Who knows what made me want a horse for Christmas but, I did and I wanted it really bad. I was not like most girls my age who would ask for clothes and electronics. I had a much bigger wish.

I was usually the first one out of bed on Christmas morning begging everyone to open presents but this year the anticipated disappointment kept me in bed.

My mother came in trying to wake me up, but I did not want to wake up. My Mom even told me that it had snowed and that I should look outside. Little did I know that their was a horse tied up to a tree in my front yard and all the neighbors were watching out of their windows waiting for me to come outside. They were anxiously waiting to see the joy on my face.

After, repeated attempts by everyone in my family to drag me out of bed, I finally got up. Once, I looked out of the window I could see this impressively large and beautiful brown horse with a big red bow tied around its neck. I was so excited I ran outside and started petting it. Although I was overcome with excitement, I was also a little timid, how was I going to take care of him. This was the best Christmas present that I have ever received. Little did I know that this present was also going to be one of the biggest responsibilities that I have ever had.

On Christmas Day we did not have a pen for the horse yet so we took him to my godparent's house. They had a farm and were able to provide a place for my new friend to stay. My parents told me that I could ride him after I had Christmas at my grandparents. I was really excited but, I was also really scared since I had only ridden a horse a few times. After Christmas with my grandparents I went out to ride my new horse whom I had named Grubby. I named him Grubby because he was one of my Grandpa's old horses and when he was younger he had grubs which are a type of worms. Looking back, this is not a normal name a ten year old girl would have named her horse. My first riding experience with Grubby was one that I will never forget. I got on and I was shaking with great apprehension. Needless to say, he sensed my fear, and decided not to make this any easier for me. Right after I got on he began to buck. I was so scared that I wanted off immediately and wasn't sure if I ever wanted to ride again. That is when I became educated in a little horse psychology. If you are scared then the horse can sense it and it too will become scared. My dad talked me into staying on Grubby and the longer I did the more that I began to relax and enjoy it. I still was very scared to go faster than a walk and when he would begin to trot I would get scared and want to quit.

After Christmas, my parents received the approval from the city to keep a horse in town, so my Dad built a huge pen for Grubby in my back yard. It was the best thing ever. How many people do you know that have a horse and a golf course in their back yard? Before long I got a riding instructor and was having lessons about three times a week. I was being taught to ride western style. I was really enjoying it. Riding is a great therapy. While growing up with three other siblings this gave me a chance to be different from them and I think that was something that I really liked. I was never good at sports when I was little and this was something that I could become good at and it was defiantly something different than what most kids my age where doing.

When I was in fourth grade I had lots of friends but, instead of going to recess I would stay in my classroom and work on homework so that when I got home I could go ride. I was completely in love with everything about riding. I wanted to ride every chance that I got. There were many drawbacks to having a horse though, I had to clean his pen out every day and let me tell you that is not fun at all. I hated having to scoop stinky horse poop up ever other day. Also, every morning before I went to school I would have to go down the hill to where Grubby's pen was and feed him. On the cold days I would have to get a hammer that was heavier than me and break the ice in his water. One day like many in the winter it was freezing cold and I had to go and break the ice in Grubby's pen. That day I got the hammer like always and tried to break the ice. Well, I did successfully break the ice, but I also ended up head first into the huge pool of water. At the time, I stood in the water crying because I was so cold. It was times like these that made me so mad that I had ever asked for a horse. Looking back, I am sure that my parents really must have gotten a kick out of this.

The summer before I was going into fifth grade I decided to go to Horse camp. I was so excited to be going to a camp where I could not only be immersed in horse riding, but also meet people, that shared my love for horses. This would also be my first overnight camp. The camp was supposed to last one week. It was at West Texas A&M which is only about thirty minutes from my house. I thought, “what could get much better than being away from home and being able to ride every day with other kids my age.” I had a lot of fun the first three days of camp. I really liked all the other campers and I was also learning a lot.

Everything changed when one night I had watering duty. I had just gotten through watering all the horses and I was turning off one of the old fashioned water pumps when one of the campers ran up and turned it on while my finger was still on top. It cut the first three-fourths inch of my index finger on my right hand completely off. Wow, that will put you into shock. I can remember it like yesterday, there was blood shooting strait up and all the other campers faces were in shock. I can't exactly explain the way that it felt because I was in so much shock I don't really remember it hurting. The councilors were college students and looking back at the situation now that I am in college, if I was in their position I don't think that I would have been able to handle the situation as well as they did. They knew exactly what to do. They put the correct pressure on my finger and then went to look for my finger tip.
The councilors rushed me in one of their trucks to the nearest hospital. The hospital that I was taken to was very small and there was not a specialist. There was only a regular emergency room doctor. The doctor on call wanted to amputate my fingerer. He did not think that there was any way of saving it. My Dad threatened the doctor so he re-attach my finger. The worst part about the hospital was the iodine that they made me soak my hand in to clean out any bacteria. This pain was the worst pain that I had ever experienced.

After my surgery I was allowed to go home. I don't remember anything about the drive home. The next thing I remembered was waking up in my bed the next day. Everything seemed like something that only happens in the movies. The next day I woke up and my parents had gotten me an appointment with a well-known plastic surgeon in Amarillo. I went there to see if he could make my finger look and feel somewhat normal again. That summer I endured four surgeries to save my finger. My doctor had to do skin grafts from my wrist and also from my middle index finger. The surgeries were very complex.

During the summer of my finger's resculpting I was not allowed to ride my horse because my doctor was worried that it could get infected. This made me want to ride so much more than I ever had.

After having my finger permanently disfigured I had to learn to deal with people looking at it. I was very uncomfortable with the way it looked until I came to college. I was always thinking that it was all that people noticed when they met me. Later I found out that most people don't even notice it until I tell them, but it still made me feel very uncomfortable. I started having fake nails put on my freshman year of high school because there was no other way to cover up the oddness of my figure. The only thing that is really noticeable is that the nail does not grow straight. I am very lucky to even have a nail but it grows some what crooked and is much thicker than my other fingernails. When I got to college I finally realized that it is a part of who I am, and that I should be proud of what I had been through, so I quit wearing fake nails as soon as I got to college.

After I was released to ride I decided for some reason that I was bored with Western riding and wanted more of a challenge. I decided that I wanted to start taking Equestrian riding lessons. My parents found me a coach and I began right away. This was one of the hardest things that I have ever learned to do in my life. I had been riding for two years before I began to ride English but, it was completely different. The thing that makes English so much harder is the saddle. The saddle does not have a horn to hold on to. You have to learn to hold on to the horse by using only your legs. This makes for great leg exercises! For what seems like a month, I was rubbing Bengay on the insides of my legs because they hurt so unbelievably bad. I began riding a new horse named Baby Lue. I loved to ride with her; she was great. After I actually learned to ride English, it became an amazing experience. I loved being able to jump obstacles on such a powerful yet graceful animal. The feeling of being in the air when you are flying over the obstacles is one of the most amazing feelings in the world. There is so much that has to go into perfecting it. I began going to competitions all the time. I enjoyed every minute of it, but in particular, the rush that I got while performing and being judged in front of many other people was unlike any other.

Well, this love for English riding was short lived when a tragedy occurred. It was beginning to get dark on November, 1996, when my life would change forever. I was out on a trail riding in the middle of the country with one of my riding friends. We had decided that it was getting late and we needed to get back to the stables to put up the horses before it got dark. I was riding a new horse that I was not completely comfortable on yet. We were beginning to turn back to the stables when my horse took off running. I had no control over him and I remember trying everything that I knew of get him to stop and nothing I tried was working. The next thing I remember was lying on the hard ground in excruciating pain. I woke up to my friend standing above me asking if I was ok. I was having a lot of trouble breathing. My friend ran and got help from my riding instructor. My instructor decided to take me to the hospital in her car because she felt that an ambulance would take to long.

We arrived at the hospital in my hometown of Hereford which was very small. The surgeon that was called in was one of my parent's good friends. He was not exactly sure what the extent of my injuries were so he took all necessary precautions. My doctor in Hereford took many x-rays. The hospital in Hereford was not equipped enough to deal with the severity of my injuries so they had to transfer me to the Hospital in Amarillo. The doctor in Hereford was very worried about my stability so he rode in the ambulance with me to the hospital in Amarillo which is about sixty miles from Hereford. The doctor that was with me had called ahead and got three specialist doctors to meet us at the hospital. Dr. Khuri my doctor from Hereford thought that I had a broken hip, some internal bleeding, and possibility of damage to the spleen and kidney complications. He had a bone specialist and surgeon waiting for me when we arrived. The doctor that I saw thought that I had a broken femur and some internal bleeding but no other complications.
Once, I got to the Hospital in Amarillo I do not really remember anything but, my mom holding my hand before I went into surgery telling me that she would be waiting for me and that everything was going to be all right. As soon as I got there the doctor rushed me in to perform surgery on my left femur. The bone specialist had to put a plate and several pins in my hip. The next morning I woke up in my hospital room with both of my parents sitting next to me. Everything seemed so groggy and it was very hard to believe what had happened the night before was really true and not just a bad dream.

The surgeon that was on call had decided that night, that he did not think that their was anything wrong with my kidney or spleen. After, two days of being in the hospital my doctors told me that they were going to release me if they could just get my temperature down because, all they thought was wrong with me was a broken femur. Well, they soon found out that that was not the only thing that was wrong and after many tests they found that I had lost the use of one of my kidneys. The injury that I had sustained was a broken left hip and the loss of the right kidney. It was very hard to hear that the doctor might have been able to save my kidney if he had just listened to the doctor from Hereford. I still have much anger towards this doctor.

My story may be uncommon for people with other hobbies, but I find that there are many harrowing stories of horse riders that have endured some very painful and at times life threatening experiences only to get back on a horse and keep riding. The love for horse riding is so very powerful. Although I have been advised to stay clear from horse riding, I still have hope and dreams that one day I will ride again.