Broken Bones
Share this story
According to a study by the National Institutes of Health, hospitals worldwide treat roughly 170 million broken bones each year. Behind every fracture is a story—a person, a split-second decision and the moment a parent realizes that casts, boots and splints cost, quite literally, an arm and a leg. These photos highlight the turning points for seven Northwest High School students, capturing the moments that changed everything.
Forbidden Fruit
Junior Allison Goode – Broken Tailbone
When Junior Allison Goode was six years old, she was not allowed to eat snacks with gluten or dairy. This restriction was meant to combat inflammation in her body. Similarly to how Eve stole the forbidden fruit from the Garden of Eden, Goode would regularly sneak snacks from the top of her pantry.
Goode recalled, “I would grab a chair and snatch it. One day, I thought I was super smart and put a pillow on the chair to make it more comfortable while I stole the food. The pillow slipped, and I fell, breaking my tailbone. I ran upstairs to my mom, lying that I had fallen down the stairs, but I forgot to move the chair from the pantry. When my dad went down to grab an ice pack, he saw what really happened. So, I broke my tailbone and got in trouble for stealing all the food”.
Goode concluded, “The doctor just told me to stay home from school for a couple of days. Do I regret it? No. The food was fire, and I got to watch My Little Pony”.
Back to the Bible, the snake in this story was Goode’s sister, Northwest High School graduate Emma Goode. Her sister was allowed to eat gluten-filled snacks and often made Allison jealous of her gluten privileges. This jealousy soon turned to envy leading goody Goode to do no good.
Stairmaster
Sophomore Emma Cox – Broken Toe
Second only to tooth enamel, bones are among the strongest substances in the human body. The femur, for example, can withstand over 6,000 pounds of compressive force. But as Sophomore Emma Cox found out, not every bone is created equally.
Cox said, “I was just running up the stairs. Then I heard a pop. My big toe started swelling and turning purple. [I] got it X-rayed, and it was broken”.
Throughout human life, the posterior and the feet connect us to the ground. Breaking either of these areas severely limits our mobility, and it is easier than expected. Typically each toe has three bones, except for the big toe which only has two. Simply stubbing your toe or misplacing your weight can cause any one of these 14 bones to fracture, pop out of place or break.
A simple misstep forced Cox to miss a month of soccer. She had to wear a boot, making it impossible for her to walk or run. Her toe has since fully healed, and she now plays for the Northwest Girls Soccer JV 1 team.
Mall Santa
Freshman Xander Lago – Broken Ring Finger
The Lago family’s most expensive holiday season was in 2012. During that Thanksgiving week, Senior Xavier Lago broke his wrist falling from the monkey bars at Maple Grove Elementary. One week later, Freshman Xander Lago broke his ring finger
Xander explained, “[My family and I] were waiting in line to see a mall Santa. I was fussy and wanted to play on the ground. I am not exactly sure how my hand ended up there, but it was between the pole and the floor when Santa came by and accidentally kicked the pole, popping out my fingernail and scraping what was underneath”.
As painful as that sounds, his family initially thought it was just a bad scrape. The next morning, the bleeding had not stopped, and his finger had turned a delicious shade of plum purple. After consulting with their general physician, they took Xander to a specialty hand surgeon at Blank Children’s Hospital in Des Moines.
“I do not remember it hurting, but it was pretty cool having a cast at the same time as my older brother,” Lago said.
Sick Trick!
Sophomore Mia Sheeler – Broken Growth Plate
A separate study from the National Institutes of Health found that 1.5% of all children sustain a scooter-related injury each year. Now with the rise in popularity of electric scooters that percentage is expected to rise. In 2020, Sophomore Mia Sheeler became part of that 1.5%.
Sheeler elaborated, “The scooter’s handle and wheel were misaligned. I tried to go straight, and as if to spite me, it sent me off. I ended up breaking my growth plate and a part of my ankle. It swelled to twice its size, and I had to wear a boot”.
Growth plates are areas of new bone growth at the ends of long bones, such as the femur and ulna. In Sheeler’s case, it was the fibula. Growth plates are only found in children up until ages 13-17. Once a person reaches skeletal maturity, the cartilage in growth plates hardens and further bone growth is no longer possible.
“I am not short because I broke my growth plate!” Sheeler joked.
Luckily for the Sheeler, most growth plate fractures heal without affecting future bone growth.
Barbell Nose Press
Senior Noah Burney – Broken Nose
In 2022, during a weight training class at Waukee High School, Senior Noah Burney was accidentally struck with an Olympic barbell.
Burney recalled, “I did not know my nose was broken until a few days later—it just kept bleeding. Because of that, it hurt more than when I broke my knee, since I had to suffer for longer”.
Unlike other bones, which often require casts or splints, broken noses typically heal on their own unless severe misalignment requires medical intervention. Even then, treatment can be avoided if the person does not mind the cosmetic alterations. A well-known example of this is actor and comedian Owen Wilson. Fortunately for Burney, the only medical intervention needed was nasal canal cauterization to stop the bleeding.
Burney noted, “Cauterizing was only a little less painful than actually breaking my nose”.
Sitting on One’s Hands
The idiom “to sit on your hands” means to do nothing about a problem. For Junior Makenna Sheffield, sitting on her hands caused the problem of a broken arm.
“In elementary school on the playground, I just sat on it,” Sheffield explained.
According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, roughly a quarter-million children are treated for playground-related injuries annually. While many playground injuries can be prevented with safer equipment, such as replacing steel slides with hard plastics, Sheffield’s injury was seemingly unavoidable. Due to the severity of her break, she was given a bright pink cast.
Sheffield added, “When I got back to school, this girl I didn’t even like gave me a big hug. I did not like having to wear it”.
ATV to ICU
Freshman Eli Herman – Crushed Arm
Herman recanted, “I tried to drift our ATV, and it ended up rolling and landing on my arm. I was knocked out for a little bit, but when I woke up, the paramedics were putting me in a helicopter to go to the hospital. My cousins were in the ATV with me and did not get hurt, so it could have been worse”.
Herman had to be treated at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, where he underwent extensive surgery. A heavy metal rod was placed in his arm to stabilize fractured bone fragments and support proper healing.
Herman stated, “After my surgery, I had to do three months of physical therapy to rebuild the muscle I lost. Since then, I have been lifting weights, and now I am stronger than I was before the accident happened.”
Though the metal rod is still there and the scar turns heads at weigh-ins, he has since made full recovery and is a wrestler for Waukee Northwest Boys JV Wrestling.
Whether it was a snack heist gone wrong, a scooter with a vendetta or an unfortunate encounter with a mall Santa, these stories show that broken bones come with some of the best (and sometimes embarrassing) tales. While the pain was temporary, the memories—and in some cases, the battle scars and metal bars—will stick around a lot longer. For all those with broken bones, fractures may divide our skeletal structure, but the common experience of pain brings us together.