So last week I posted about playing soccer again for the first time in over 20 years.  Yesterday was the last game of the season and once again I started out playing goalie.  I had one save, but for the most part we dominated the action and kept the ball on the other end of the field.  In the second half the guys let me play in the field and all went well for the first few minutes.  In fact I got an assist when I crossed the ball from the right wing and Wayne was able to head it home for our first goal.  Twenty minutes later I was playing defense and went to cut to my right (off my left foot) when I heard an ominous pop and went down like a sack of stones.  I also heard a loud, high pitch squeal which I quickly realized was coming from me.  I quickly squelched it, but the damage was done to my ego.

I was done for the day for sure, but I wasn’t so sure I wasn’t going to be done for several months at a minimum.  I was going to just go home and ice it, but Celeste came to pick me up from the field and she talked me into going to the emergency room.  We headed down to Davie Hospital in Mocksville which is a 1/2 hour drive vs. the 10 minute drive to Forsyth Medical Center, but there’s never a wait there and it has the advantage of being considered an urgent care unit until 10 p.m. which means that it’s billed at a lower rate than an emergency room.

Within 5 minutes of arrival I was done with paperwork and had a nurse taking my history and vitals, and within 15 minutes I was lying on a table with a young doctor manipulating my knee in all kinds of unnatural ways.  I was heartened by the fact that he looked like he’d played football or some similar sport in his day (he had the look of a halfback about him) so he was probably familiar with the concerns of a middle-aged weekend warrior.  After examining my knee, then sending me for x-rays and then re-examining my knee he informed me that the "integrity" of my knee was very strong, hence the reason my knee is not qualified for public office, and he said he thought I’d gotten off lucky. He suspects a "Grade 1" i.e. minor tear of my LCL, maybe a little worse, and said that he’s almost certain that I have a non-surgical recovery in my future.  I told him that the only negative of this news is that I now consider myself a huge wuss for squealing like a stuck pig over a "minor" injury.  He did his best to reassure me that I’m not a wuss, but I sensed that he truly thought I was.

So I’m off my feet for a few days, with my leg elevated and orders to keep my knee iced today and maybe tomorrow.  Once again I’m becoming intimate with a bag of frozen vegetables; my brother will remember my stories involving a certain surgical procedure 12 years ago that required I keep a bag of frozen succotash in my lap for a couple of days and I’m sure he’d happily recount it for you.  This time I’m feeling the cooling love of frozen peas.

Hopefully I’ve dodged a bullet and will be back to no good in a month or two.  If the doc’s wrong then I’ll be seeing an ortho in a week or two and we’ll take it from there.

Silver lining: I have a legit reason for being a couch potato for a couple of days.