Injury

By Brandon Pierce

narrative

My fellow lineman and I crouched down at the line of scrimmage. The tension was building around us as the quarterback called out “Hut 1”..”Hut 2”..”Hut 3”. The center lineman snaps the ball. Both sides exploded into each other and started in a pushing and pulling shoving match. Pads clashed and grunts and groans came out of everybody. Then a hole in the line opened as the running back came sprinting through, he had his head down and the ball wrapped tightly in his death grip.

At that point in time, it’s as if all laws of physics end, Time slowed down and I felt as if I was in a movie, I was at the climax waiting to see what happens. Except this is real. I griped a hold of the running back as he came by, and I turned around because of the momentum he had. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the blue jersey and white helmet of one of my teammates. He was attempting a diving tackle to bring the runner down but he missed his target and hit the inside of my defenseless knee. It sent me into a spinning ball to the ground.

The ground was cold, wet, and hard in the morning mist. I heard the footsteps running to me from the sideline. I soon saw the familiar faces of my dad, coach, and someone I didn’t recognize. I heard voices asking me questions, “Where does it hurt?” “Can you feel your toes and fingers?” I t thought to myself are these people idiots, I’m lying here on the ground holding my knee where do you think it hurts. I wanted to say this but I was in so much pain, it felt like I was just shot 32 times then thrown off a cliff only to be run over by a bus, and all I could muster as an answer was a painful groan.

I was carried off the field and over to the sidelines. I realized that the unfamiliar face was that of the one of the many E.M.T.’s waiting seen as though 3 other people had already been taken to the hospital by ambulance in the early game and 1 in ours. He gave+ me an ice pack and told me to put it on my knee. It was really cold on my already frozen carcass of a body. After a few moments the blinding pain had faded and I wanted to get back in the game. My team was down and I wanted to go in to finish our defensive stand.

I soon realized that this was one wish of mine that wouldn’t come true. As soon as I stood up that searing pain came rushing back like a father who just realized he forgot his 2-year-old son at the mall. It took to my knees and I just climbed back into my chair. It was so hard for me to sit there and watch my team battle it out against one of our biggest rivals, it just wasn’t part of my “it’s my duty so I’ll do it” personality.

When the game ended, my dad decided that sense I still couldn’t put any weight on my knee that it was time to take me to the hospital. The ride there was a long and excruciating one. The ride in our barney purple Ford Explorer was bumpy all the way there causing the pounding pain to become even more agitating. When we got there we had to wait of course for forty minutes before they finally took me in and looked at my knee for two seconds to say that I needed a Magnetic Reconnaissance Imaging or MRI. An MRI is when you go into a little tube and then the use real powerful magnets to take images of parts of your body one layer at a time.

When I had it done the radiologist a.k.a the professional looked at it studied it and finally said there’s nothing wrong and with a little physical therapy you should be a ok.

Well that taught me a lesson, always get a second opinion. When I finally did get that second opinion the doctor I went to go see took the same MRI photos and by the third frame he saw what was wrong that I had scare tissue and all that good stuff in my knee. I went to surgery and da da da da da da….