Mother of God this hurts
For those of you (everyone except my only loyal fan, Chris) who missed the game last night, here’s an update.
We played the same team that destroyed us our first game this quarter. The pattern continued last night. We were down 0-1 within the first minute. Towards the end we hit 1-3 and scored again making it 2-3 with about a minute left. Instead of us scoring, they scored again with 10 seconds to go making it an unquestionable 2-4 loss for us.
Perhaps the highlight of my night was at about 90 seconds left. Their really fast guy and me start fighting for the puck as we fly to our goal. He’s going to score because our goalie sucks–unless I stop him. We are jabbing and chopping each other the whole way, skating faster and faster. All this must have distracted me from the wall that was rapidly approaching.
We were now headed to the corner, not directly towards our goal. Good. He falls near the goaline. Good. He takes me down with him and I slide feet first into the boards. I am between the wall and this guy. My right ankle decides that it wants to stretch a little and bends inward a little. I get up and furiously fight back into the game. Wait, actually, I get up and fall down immediately. I can’t put any pressure on my right skate. I keep thinking I can walk this off and tell the official that I’m fine–the game’s still in high gear. I quickly realize that my ankle isn’t designed to stretch as far as it did, which was apparantly pretty far, and I have a serious sprain…or a broken ankle. I do the “Mother of God this hurts” shimmy and hobble to the bench, hollering for another player to replace me.
I fall to the ground and Shelley comes over to assist. Shelley is, besides my wife, my best friend and I now owe her HUGE. She’s a physical therapist in training. She works at the PT office for OSU and will have her PHD in PT in 2 years. Lucky to have her around ;). She gives me the ol’ “you’ll be fine, I know this hurts a lot, you are fucked–don’t even think about walking ever again” look. Ok so I exagerated a little. She gives me a quick exam and tells me it’s probably just a sprain but if I’m lucky, it’s broken. Seriously. That’s something I didn’t know. Apparantly, with ankle injuries, the recovery is much smoother, more painless, and quicker if it’s broken rather than a sprain. I guess the idea is that bones break and heal more cleanly while ligimants do not. I never thought that I’d hope for a broken bone.
So her and my other awesome friend Jeff push me across the ice to our gear (the games over, we lost, we’re gettin’ outta here!). The pain is unimaginable. I can put absolutly no downward force my right foot. Or is it upward force (normal force for you physics-geeks?). Whatever–no weight on the right foot. They set me down and Shelley ices my ankle and tapes me up while I think about passing out or vomiting in the recycle bin beside me.
Shelley is so patient and gentle. She really made this so much less painful than it could have been. Thank God for her. Actually, everyone was so nice and helpful. Upon seeing that I’d likely pass out soon, Jeff got me a soda. Sarah was still confused as to what happened but she talked to me and calmed me down. She returned all my gear and took care of me.
It is amazing how helpless you feel when you are missing a foot.
They get me home and Shelley ices it some more and tells me that I must go to see a doctor now or tomorrow. I decide to go tomorrow and sit it out. Then I reconsider and when I find out that our copay is pretty low and that the pain is amazing, we decide to head of to the OSU emergency room. It’s not really an emergency but I don’t want to wait until morning. It’s about 3 am at this point.
[UPDATE 5/5/05]
I went to the hospital and after xrays, it was determined that nothing so broken…seriously. They gave me some crutches and meds and sent me on my way.
I went to the doctor the next morning and she confirmed that it probably isn’t broken. She prescribed physical therapy. I’ve been to physical therapy a few times since and it’s great. I do all these excercises that are pretty painful but help a whole lot. I can walk now with a slight limp and when I take pain meds I can run ;).
It’s been over a week and some of the pain is still very acute. I don’t have any pain at all unless I am walking or stretching. Pam, the PT said the acute pain may indicate that it was slightly broken afterall–like a small chip or something. Regardless, it’s getting better. I should be able to skate again next week and play hockey again (if I’m careful :P) in 2 weeks.
Thanks again to Sarah and Shelley for taking care of me and putting up with my whining ;)
BTW: Those pictures were taken 5 days after it happened–the bruising didn’t show up until then…weird.