Strains and Breaks
They don't have quite the visual appeal of a good scar, but after that post it seems worthwhile to me to cover the broken bones and major strains of my life, all of which came courtesy of extreme physical activity.
I've only broken one bone in my life. It was one of the little bones in the middle of my right foot. As I sat down to wrote this I would have sworn it was courtesy of a game of ultimate played in worn out spikes. My memory says this was during summer league 2001, but that can't be right because I definitely played in the end of season tournament that year, and I also still was a college student because I was treated on the student health care plan. I'm pretty sure I had to schlep around campus with a big soft sandal. I don't think I played summer league ultimate in 2000, so maybe it was during intramural soccer or something other sport I would have been wearing spikes for. In any event, the bone cracked a little bit when I planted and the spikes gave out. It was minorly irritating, but I stayed off it for a few weeks and everything healed up fine.
My sprained ankle was worse. My senior year of high school football I managed to sprain my left ankle badly enough that I had to sit out one game. To add insult to injury, the injury occurred on the very last play that I was going to be in for the game; we were crushing the other team and I and the other starters had already been told we were coming out after the other team punted. My recollection is that I blew past my guy going for the block and my classmate Brian knocked his guy on top of my leg. I went down real hard cursing and got carried off to the emergency room. I was told that it was sprained about as badly that it could be sprained without breaking, but that also feels like something they tell disappointed student athletes to make them feel better about it, so who knows.
In any event, I missed the next game against Northwood, which I was extra disappointed about because I'd run over their center repeatedly during a preseason scrimmage and was looking forward to doing it again for real. After that I played in every game and was basically back at full strength for all four playoff games in our run to the finals. The sports ego part of me says that injury kept me from making all-conference; the more realistic part says I wasn't that good in the first place. On the plus side, my coach told me some years later that I was his go to example of a guy who "through relentless physical conditioning only missed one game with an injury" so there's that, for whatever it's worth.
My sprained knee was probably more disappointing and certainly longer lasting. I was in OCS (Officer Candidate School) at Quantico for the Marines in early 2002. On February 14 of that year, I lost my grip while I was moving over the third obstacle on the long all afternoon obstacle course. I feel about 25 feet and landed on my nose and my right knee. The good news was that my nose somehow did not break, although my military issue "birth control" glasses shuttered in all directions. The bad news was that I severely strained the MCL in my right knee. After a few days on casualty they had me try to move without the crutch. That failed pretty spectacularly, so I got my ticket punched for home. They wanted me to try again after I had healed up, but the idea of redoing half of boot was not appealing, so I went and got my current job instead.
I've done physical therapy a couple times since then, but even so it's the one old injury that has lingered with me. Running for any significant consecutive distance hurts, which is why I've mostly stopped doing that, but the more I work out and build up the muscle around the knee, the less it bothers me, which is another incentive to keep in good shape, as if I needed another one.
EDIT: Ok, I remember now. My teammate Matt knocked his guy so far back that he landed on my ankle. Brian helped cause my concussion in Eighth grade.
I've only broken one bone in my life. It was one of the little bones in the middle of my right foot. As I sat down to wrote this I would have sworn it was courtesy of a game of ultimate played in worn out spikes. My memory says this was during summer league 2001, but that can't be right because I definitely played in the end of season tournament that year, and I also still was a college student because I was treated on the student health care plan. I'm pretty sure I had to schlep around campus with a big soft sandal. I don't think I played summer league ultimate in 2000, so maybe it was during intramural soccer or something other sport I would have been wearing spikes for. In any event, the bone cracked a little bit when I planted and the spikes gave out. It was minorly irritating, but I stayed off it for a few weeks and everything healed up fine.
My sprained ankle was worse. My senior year of high school football I managed to sprain my left ankle badly enough that I had to sit out one game. To add insult to injury, the injury occurred on the very last play that I was going to be in for the game; we were crushing the other team and I and the other starters had already been told we were coming out after the other team punted. My recollection is that I blew past my guy going for the block and my classmate Brian knocked his guy on top of my leg. I went down real hard cursing and got carried off to the emergency room. I was told that it was sprained about as badly that it could be sprained without breaking, but that also feels like something they tell disappointed student athletes to make them feel better about it, so who knows.
In any event, I missed the next game against Northwood, which I was extra disappointed about because I'd run over their center repeatedly during a preseason scrimmage and was looking forward to doing it again for real. After that I played in every game and was basically back at full strength for all four playoff games in our run to the finals. The sports ego part of me says that injury kept me from making all-conference; the more realistic part says I wasn't that good in the first place. On the plus side, my coach told me some years later that I was his go to example of a guy who "through relentless physical conditioning only missed one game with an injury" so there's that, for whatever it's worth.
My sprained knee was probably more disappointing and certainly longer lasting. I was in OCS (Officer Candidate School) at Quantico for the Marines in early 2002. On February 14 of that year, I lost my grip while I was moving over the third obstacle on the long all afternoon obstacle course. I feel about 25 feet and landed on my nose and my right knee. The good news was that my nose somehow did not break, although my military issue "birth control" glasses shuttered in all directions. The bad news was that I severely strained the MCL in my right knee. After a few days on casualty they had me try to move without the crutch. That failed pretty spectacularly, so I got my ticket punched for home. They wanted me to try again after I had healed up, but the idea of redoing half of boot was not appealing, so I went and got my current job instead.
I've done physical therapy a couple times since then, but even so it's the one old injury that has lingered with me. Running for any significant consecutive distance hurts, which is why I've mostly stopped doing that, but the more I work out and build up the muscle around the knee, the less it bothers me, which is another incentive to keep in good shape, as if I needed another one.
EDIT: Ok, I remember now. My teammate Matt knocked his guy so far back that he landed on my ankle. Brian helped cause my concussion in Eighth grade.