"Everyone come to the floor for conditioning!" yelled my coach charlie, "Except for you Rachel, you need to keep working on your fronts on beam." 

Those two sentences could have been one of the best things I heard all day.  First off, I got to skip conditioning.  Secondly, I was working on front flips on beam which was one of the few skills I enjoyed doing in gymnastics.  My task for the day was to stick 5 fronts.  I had stuck 3 already but i probably attempted at least 10.  So my fronts were definitely not consistent yet.  But i was ok with that, considering I just started learning them.  

I was standing on the edge of the beam on my toes and with my arms tight in front of me.  I took a deep breath in and visualized myself doing a perfect front. Then slowly exhaled and resighted the words, "arms, pop, tuck, stick". I took three powerful steps and pushed off the beam and threw my body forward and tucked.  But something went wrong when i pushed off the beam.  I tried to compensate for the bad take off.  I pulled my body into a tight tuck to make sure I would complete the flip.  But I over compensated and I ended up stumbling off the beam and over a few mats and onto the floor.  By the time all the momentum I had stopped I was standing on the floor hysterically  laughing about 15 feet away from the beam.  After a few seconds the shock went away and I realized my toe was throbbing with pain.  I thought i just stubbed it so I went I reached down to rub the pain out.  But thats when I lost it.  I saw a drop of blood!  So by the way, I am extremely terrified of blood.  So when I saw it, I threw my body to the ground.  I lied on my stomach, so my toe would be out of view.  And at the top of my lungs I yell, "BLOOD, I'M BLEEDING!!!" So personally I thought I was just being a cry baby, I was expecting it to be just a little cut on my toe that would need a cool strawberry short cake band-aid.  But apparently my dramatic fall to the ground and scream was expectable.  my coach comes over and yells to the other girls to get a med kit.  well that was an indication to me that, I needed more than just a little band aid.  So I am laying on my stomach the whole time while my coach is rapping my foot up, I have no idea what is happening.  Little did I know my toe was squirting blood out like a water fountain.  Apparently blood was all over the place.  There was a trail from the beam over all the mats i stubbled upon and on the floor.  Luckily all my teammates knew me very well and they knew not to mention anything about the blood.  They all just sat around me and we talked like nothing was happening and like blood was not squirting out of my foot.  once my coach finished she told me I should probably go to the hospital and she casually threw in that she was able to see my bone in my toe too.  EW, I really did not need to know that.  So anyways, I had my parents take me to the ER where they gave me 13 stitches going around my big toe.  And two weeks later the day I got my stitches out I ripped it right back open =) 

Since that day I have never skipped out on conditioning nor have I ever done front flips on beam... i've been scared