Ow

To rival Carl: I was flying down the field, with the ball at my feet, ready to shoot on the enemy's goal. Out of nowhere, a defender steals the ball from me. As he does a quick turn-around to pass the ball to his team-mate, I run on the side of him, in an effort to get it back. WHAM! His bulky figure slams me, causing a portion of my left leg, from the bottom of my foot to my knee, to fall towards the left, while the rest of my body, from the knee up, falls to the right. A series of sickening pops erupts loudly from my knee, loud enough for a couple nearby people to hear. Down, down, down I went, till after what seemed like a minute, by body hit the ground, followed by another loud pop as my now dislocated knee popped itself back into place. Then came the pain. Sheer, blinding, gut-wrenching pain emanated from my knee, cause me to roll around in agony, praying that it would stop. Unfortunately, it didn't. Unable to stand up on my own, I was carried off the field by two kind team-mates. I was afraid I had broken a bone, because the pain was immense and I didn't think a leg could dislocate that badly without breaking a bone or two. I was seated on the bench, shaking from the pain, and I started taking long slow breaths and focusing on other things, in an effort to subside the pain that was still attacking my knee. It didn't work. I was calling my parents repeatedly, trying to tell them what had happened to me, but I was getting no answer. I finally gave up, and told the coach I would drive myself to the hospital. He asked if I felt OK enough to drive, and I said yes. He then offered to drive his car behind me all the way there, in case I needed to pull over if the pain got any worse. As I started limping to the car, arms slouched over two friendly sets of shoulders, my parents called back, and I told them what had happened. They didn't want me to drive myself home, so they drove out to Watsonville High School, where my game had been, to pick me up. My dad took my car home, and my mom drove me to the Emergency Room. The X-Ray came out clean. No breaks at all, which I found very hard to believe. The pain was too great for there to be nothing wrong. We then scheduled an MRI, which showed why I was feeling the way I was. I had completely shredded my anterior cruciate ligament, and had an ugly tear in my meniscus. I had also ruptured my posterior joint capsule, and had a small little rip in my lateral collateral ligament. Unfortunately for me, this meant surgey was imminent. I was scheduled for the day after Christmas, which was kind of a bummer, but it was my first surgery ever, so I was feeling scared, nervous, excited, and slightly bad-ass. The surgery went well. The procedure consisted of the surgeon removing a piece of my patellar tendon with a small chunk of tibia on one end and a small chunk of patella on the other, to be used as a new ligament. He then drilled a hole through my tibia and up into my femur, where the makeshift ligament would be placed. After removing the shreds of my destroyed ACL, he put in my new ligament and screwed the chunks of bone into my femur and tibia, to hold the ligament in place. He then scraped out the tear in my meniscus, stitched me up, and sent me home. The week after surgery was the worst, most painful week of my life. It made the actual accident seem like a massage, the post-op pain was so bad. I suffered through that first terrible week, and then I suffered through the second worst week of my life. Finally, I could feel myself starting to recover. The swelling was starting to go down, I was in physical therapy, and I could walk with crutches! For the first two weeks, I was unable to get out of bed without assistance. Anyway, my advice to you is; let the overweight defender have the ball.