The Road to Recovery: Part 1

I heard a gunshot. Then everything went black as I crumbled to the ground. It felt like someone had hit me in the back of the leg with a baseball bat. At first, I looked around, worried I tripped on someone, and I wanted to check on their well-being. My eyes were met with an empty court. Something was amiss—no one was there.

The other players all came running over with worried looks on their faces. They helped me to a chair and grabbed me an ice pack. I was too enveloped in my haze of thoughts to even hear what they were saying. I knew what had happened. I tore my Achilles tendon.

• 

What the hell was I doing playing pickle ball in the first place? Simple. In the summer months, my wife and I enjoy riding our bikes up and down the bike trail for some nice bonding time and parasympathetic nervous system activity. The extra fat burn is a great bonus. Plus, I enjoy the aesthetics of my wife’s legs and don’t mind falling behind and staring at her behind. Bike riding is a no-go during a Buffalo winter, and I was looking for something similar. My parents introduced me to pickle ball. So, clearly this whole ordeal is their fault—just kidding, Mom.

I loved it. I had played tennis in my youth and picked up on pickle ball immediately. I was having a blast playing with my parents and meeting some of my favorite clients on the courts. It was my new, fun Sunday activity.

***

The ice pack was pointless. I hopped on one leg to my car in the parking lot. Adrenaline was starting to wear off, and the pain was starting to slither in. The first thing I thought was, “How long is this recovery going to be until I can squat and deadlift again?” The second was, “How the hell am I going to drive when it was the Achilles in my right leg that tore?”

The drive to the immediate care was not smooth sailing, to say the least. Every bump and divot in the road ached through my whole body. I hopped into the immediate care on one leg and dealt with possibly the most painful part of this whole process: the guy in line in front of me. This guy was a mess. He couldn’t find his license or his insurance card, and he couldn’t remember his address. It was the equivalent of being in line at the supermarket, stuck behind the stereotypical old lady who first brandishes an envelope containing 101 coupons, then can’t find her credit card, then decides to pay by check but wants to round to a whole number, so she has to search her pockets for change, then wants to show the cashier pictures of her grandkids—all while you wait behind her, and oh yeah, someone severs the tendon in the back of your leg. I stood there on one leg, my clothing pooling with sweat until this guy figured his life out and was on his way. I shambled my way to the admissions desk.

A few hours and x-rays later, I was on crutches and sporting a cast.

The following week was not the best I’ve ever had.

I couldn’t shower all week, driving with a cast to different orthopedic offices was not the most pleasant experience, working all day on crutches straight up stinks, and the pain I felt at night hit excruciating levels.

It felt like my foot was being burned off by a steady hand equipped with a vendetta and a blowtorch. I would lay in bed at night, imagining I had pissed off a Mexican drug cartel and been caught, and they were enacting their torturous revenge by slowly burning my extremities—no bueno. In agony, I would try to keep quiet for as long as possible without waking my wife, until I would finally break out in moans:

“Giiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.” I made a game of it by seeing how long I could go before I had to cry out for some pharmaceutical relief.

A few good things happened that week:

One of my favorite clients got me an appointment with a great surgeon and in for surgery at the end of the week. I knew it was meant to be when I called the office and another one of my favorite clients was working on the other end of the phone.

I didn’t miss one workout. I snuck a few extra workouts in since I figured I may be out for a couple days after surgery.

I felt pain. This may sound silly to list as a positive, but I think it’s good to be uncomfortable. In my opinion, it breeds toughness for the future. I had torn my left distal biceps tendon years ago and had to have surgery. That really sucked, but the suck of the biceps surgery is the reason I was confident that I would get through this. I’ve experienced quite a few painful sucks in my lifetime, and it really makes you appreciate when things don’t suck. So as another one of my favorite clients would say, “Suck it up, buttercup.”

***

Next stop, surgery, and why did that tendon tear?

Read Part 2 here.