These are a few of the things I used to tell my parents or teachers so they'd get off my back. And for all the kids out there -- I really hope I'm not blowing your cover!!

5. "I'm fiiiiiine!" Every now and then we are afforded a 'free pass' to fractures. Maybe we got lucky and braced ourselves from a fall the right way, or maybe we accidentally bumped into something -- but miraculously no bones got broken! And as long as there was no sharp pain of a fracture I gave myself a clean bill of health. Arms crossed over my chest, face pouted, and I adamantly refused to allow anyone to "check to make sure.."

4. "It doesn't hurt that much." I never knew how to accurately gauge the amount of pain I was in. (I still don't!) When I was asked "on a scale of 1-10..." I never knew how the pain at 7 differed from the pain at 6 or 8. After awhile I did away with trying to figure 'just how badly it hurts' and realized that by saying "it doesn't hurt that much" I could knock off several birds with one stone! By saying this I knew that my parents wouldn't be so worried, and I also figured out that the crazy pain medication they'd give me would be a smaller dose. In other words I associated the pain with the medication, and the amount of medication was related to how long I could remain at school to goof around with my friends.

3. "I'm not tired." This is uttered out of the mouths of every child. After operations or major fractures it was expected that I would need to rest. And no matter how physically exhausted I felt I refused to sit around in bed for more than a few hours. For someone who does a lot of sitting in her wheelchair, I am quite frankly terrible at remaining in one position. I fidget a lot, I have a tendency to move around a lot, and being told to remain stationary sounds like you're punishing me. But of course after I came home from operations my parents would get me set-up in bed, and while I complained.. the second my head hit the pillow I would doze.

2. "I didn't scratch or pull the cotton out." In every cast I have ever had the cotton padding that lines the edge is always pulled out. Why? Because I itch. Because I scratch. Because I'm an impatient person who can't wait the 3 months until the thing gets taken off! Every time I go to the cast technicians they look at me knowingly, "I see you've been scratching again Sandy...there are red marks on your skin..." What can I say? If I had a dog I'd probably tell them that the dog did it.

1. "I won't get hurt, I just know it!" Somehow having O.I. also gave me the authority to be a licensed fortune teller. Whether it was jumping into the ball pit at someone's birthday party, or maybe it was trying to climb ropes in P.E., or the time I tried jumping on the trampoline, let's not forget when I sat on a roller coaster I was at least 6 inches too short for... I insisted on being allowed to do all these things because somehow I just knew nothing bad would happen. Spoiler alert: I never actually knew the outcome beforehand. I just wanted to try all of these things, but in my mind the more I confidently proclaimed getting hurt won't be a possibility - then maybe my chances of getting the green light would increase in my favor. Sometimes my persistence worked, often times it didn't... c'est la vie!