An aching pain shot through my leg as I lay on the floor screaming. I had been playing basketball during the summer for a small league with some of the surrounding towns. My team, Sedan, had been playing our rivals Caney. We were losing by almost 30 points and it was the fourth quarter of the game. There was no way we were going to be able to make a comeback since we only had five girls on our team, which one was hurt, and the other four of us were exhausted from playing almost four quarters without a break. The other team knew that we weren’t going to win, but they kept beating us down. It was getting old, and fast. My team decided that if they were going to keep playing dirty and fouling us, we were going to do the same to them. We scored ten points but there was less than a minute left and we knew we weren’t going to win. We didn’t stop though, we kept pushing them. There was a girl on Caney’s team that I had never gotten along with. She had the ball and I could tell that she was preparing to shoot. I jumped in the air to block her shot. She is 6’2” tall and I’m only 5’6” so I had to jump as high as I could. I tipped the ball, but as I came down I fell wrong and heard a loud popping noise. As I lay on the floor in agony, I knew right then that I had torn my ACL since I had already torn it once before.
I went to the same knee doctor that I had seen before. When he walked into the room he just started smiling really big. He asked me what had happened, meaning how I had hurt my knee. All I said was, “I tore my ACL. That’s all there is to know.”
He laughed again and pulled on my leg. Then he said probably the most awful thing that I had ever heard. “Well, you tore your ACL. What day do you want to have surgery?”
He went on to explain that ACL stands for Anterior Cruciate Ligament. When you have a torn ACL it is impossible to run without your knee popping out of place. He also told me that after you have torn one ACL you are 85% more likely to tear your other one, which explains why I most likely tore mine for the second time.
I knew that I wouldn’t be able to play volleyball or basketball and I was heart broken. But if I had surgery right away I would most likely be back in time for softball, so I had some hope. Ever since I first touched a softball I have wanted to play in college and the only possible way I would be able to do that would be if I could play softball my senior year in high school.
One week after my doctor’s appointment I went in for surgery. I arrived at the doctor at 10:30 in the morning. I changed into a lovely blue dress that made me look like Poppa Smurf’s very over weight daughter. I scuffled from the bathroom to my bed very quickly because I didn’t want any of the nurses to see me butt. When I finally got situated in bed the nurse came in to give me and IV and muscle relaxer.
After 30 minutes I was feeling really good and loving it. The next nurse came in and told me it was time. The next thing I remember was waking up in a lot of pain.
My leg was throbbing and I was shaking really bad. As soon as the nurse realized that I was awake she tried to sit me up. I refused saying that if I sat up I was going to throw up. She just laughed and sat me up anyway. About .7 seconds later I threw up and didn’t stop throwing up for almost two days.
All I did for those two days was lay in bed, only getting up to use the bathroom. And even that was a workout.
On the third day after surgery I had to go to physical therapy. The first house of therapy consisted of taking measurements and taking off my bandages. MY leg was almost three times bigger than my other leg.
After measuring was over I was told I was going to begin doing simple exercises. My physical therapist told me to lift my leg in the air. Easy, or so I thought. I tried for about three minutes and couldn’t get my leg to budge.
At that moment I realized how hard recovering was going to be. After that I set my goals. All I wanted to do before Christmas was run again. Hopefully, when I do that I can look back on the day when my life crumbled before my eyes and see how far I’ve come!