The Sins of Our Youth

It was about 30 years ago. I was walking back to school from a local pizzeria and I was unaware that the high school parking lot had a thin layer of black ice. After taking a few steps, I lost my footing and began to fall. The prevailing logic is not to fight it but go with it, much like a car that hydroplanes. The best way to avoid an accident is to turn the steering wheel towards the direction of the spinout. Unfortunately, being only 17, and not having a license, I didn’t know much about how to navigate a car out of a spinout. I certainly had no experience dealing with loosing my footing on ice. I instinctively tried to break my fall by using my right leg to balance my weight – ALL of my weight. As I proved the law of gravity, I both heard and felt something rip in my knee. The pain was instant and excruciating. It was like a knife went through my right knee. I limped to the nurse’s office, where school officials called for an ambulance to take me to the hospital.

Even without the aid of MRI’s, which were two decades away, the doctor knew I had done a pretty thorough job on my knee. The prognosis was that I had torn the ligaments in the knee and the doctor recommended surgery. Knowing my tolerance for knives and pain, which is measured on a scale of 1 to 10 as a negative 50, I thanked them for their concern, and opted for a lengthy healing process. Four weeks in a cast was my “sacrifice” for the cause. Not being much of an athlete – that’s putting it mildly – I figured how bad could it be. I was young, I had my whole life ahead of me; why spoil it by having a scar on my knee.

For the most part, my decision did not come back to haunt me. With the exception of a two-week episode in 1993, during a vacation to Nantucket with my then girlfriend now wife Maria that required anti-inflammatory medication and a draining of the knee, I have for the most part been extremely lucky with the knee.

Last Tuesday, that luck ended. I woke up that morning, showered, shaved and drove my usual 40-minute commute to my job in Commack. I arrived at 9:45, walked into the store, proceeded with the other four salesmen in the store to turn on the TV’s and prepare for what I had hoped would be a fruitful day of selling. Around 10:30, though, I felt a tingling in my right knee, followed by a tightening of the area and a swelling of my knee cap. Over the next couple of hours my knee continued to deteriorate until I literally could not bend it at all, nor put any weight on it. I managed to limp on my one good leg to a chair in one of the smaller showrooms, hoping that by resting it, the swelling would go down. Nothing doing. Two hours went by and it was obvious, what ever was wrong with my knee was not going to go away by itself. I called Maria up and asked her to come down to the store to pick me up. Two hours later she arrived and with the aid of two of my fellow salesmen, I was shoveled into the back seat of my wife's car and on my way to the hospital.

They drained the knee – 50 cc’s of mostly blood - and took some X-rays. Initially, it was thought that I had torn my meniscus. The following day, when I went to see my orthopedist, he had a differing opinion. The size of the swelling, coupled with the amount of blood, pointed towards a torn ACL. An MRI however revealed something even worse: a partially torn quad tendon. Of all the possible scenarios, this was the one that proved to be the most infuriating. A torn meniscus or ACL would’ve been bad enough, but I could’ve had a knee brace made and within a few days, been back at work. The problem with the quad tendon area being partially torn is that the only remedy is keeping the knee as immobile as possible and lots of rest. Four to six weeks worth of rest in fact. Even worse, I can’t even go to physical therapy to strengthen the knee because the exercises could actually cause the tendons to completely rupture, thereby requiring surgery. Even standing up and walking around can put enough pressure on the knee to cause a rupture.

To say I am pissed would be an understatement. My job is the kind of work that requires me to stand on my feet for 8 to 12 hours a day. I can’t phone it in as it were. Couple that with the fact that we are in the middle of a very deep recession and the long-term prospects are not good. At best, I will be sidelined until March 3rd; at worst, it could be much longer. I asked the doctor if he saw any evidence on the MRI of old scar tissue, dating back several years. He definitely saw such scar tissue. I asked him if, knowing what I know now, if I had chosen to let them operate thirty years ago, would I be in this position now. While he wasn’t prepared to say definitively, he thought it couldn’t have hurt.

Great, I thought. 30 years ago, I made an unwise decision to put off a surgical procedure, which if taken might well have avoided this whole freakish incident in the first place. I know I am probably being very hard on myself. After all, how many 17 year olds have the presence of mind to do the right thing. When you’re that young you have a hard enough time seeing your way to 20 much less 47. Still, what I wouldn’t give to go back and replay that moment again. Like so many other regrettable moments in my life, I chose the easy way out. Don’t deal with the pain; instead postpone it and hope it goes away. Like the guy that plays Russian roulette I gambled that I wouldn’t catch the bullet. And for 30 years I dodged it, save for that one near miss. Last week I caught the bullet square between the eyes, and now I might well be unemployed anywhere from a month to who knows how long. I have no one else to blame for this than myself.

Beth did her best to cheer me up by saying how remarkable it is that our bodies last as long as they do without breaking down. She’s a good friend, and she means well, but there are people far older than I that are in far better condition, whose right knees don’t look like broken spaghetti strands. Like it or not, we are each the sum total of our collective choices, good and bad. Even at the tender young age of 17 I had a responsibility to take care of myself. I made a bad choice as a kid, and now, pushing 50, here I am reaping the seeds of neglect and indifference of a misspent youth.

For all those that read this blog – yes all three of you – please keep me in your prayers during the next few weeks. Pray that my employer keeps my job open for me to come back to, and that my knee heals properly. Also pray for my sanity, along with the sanity of Maria, as well.

Blessings,

Peter