Hurt Bad

[Thorpesaurous]

So as some of you know, I have really bad knees. In fact, one of the resons I started posting here is because my knees really gave ended my ability to play, and therefore generally be involved in the basetball community I grew up in, and this became something of an outet for me.

Since then I got into coaching, and after a few surgeries, and adjusting my expectations, I've been able to play a little bit. And this year was my biggest in a while. I got invited to join an awfull men's league team, but they had three decent players, and adding me, we actually won a game, and when all four of us are on the floor together, I dare say we're competitive.

Thursday night we're playing the second best team in the league, who's filled with kids in their early 20s, including some who play in DII programs. I don't start, as one of the other guys plays PG, so I go in for him so we know we can at least get the ball up. But fourth quarters we all play together.

So I come in, and feel really good. Get a layup, draw a foul, drop an assist. And we're close. I turn it over on a pass to the corner, and I'm backpeddling on D with my buddy behind me on a 3-2. The kid coming at me can move, so I use an old trick, I deke to the left, to force him left, but jump back to backpeddling, and essentially cut the court in half. The kid does a nice little drift dribble and is gonna shoot a three. So I jam my right toe in the court around the elbow and drive myself out toward him to contest ...
But going from full throttle backward to full throttle forward, even as limited as those throttles are these days, proved to be too much. My right achilles tore right off the bone. It was this horrible stretchy feeling, followed by a huge pop sound. I thought my shoelace had popped. I actually got off the ground, and on the way down realized it. I grabbed the shooter by the shoulder and told him don't move. But he shoved me off chasing the rebound. I kept my balance and asked the far ref to stop the game, but he didn't. However the closer ref behind me heard it. He came up and grabbed me. Said it was the 4th he'd seen this year, and he and my buddy got me to the bleachers where his wife called 911. My sweat ran cold. I thought I was gonna throw up. It was excruciating.
Ambulance took me to hospital, where they filled me with morphine. They took a useless x-ray, I knew what was wrong, but they carried on with acting like I'm an idiot. They casted me beyond the knee. Told me to see my doc the next morning. He sent me to an ortho to get MRI, who then decided that my purple heel did have a torn achilles, and sent me to surgeon. Surgery Tuesday, after an exhausting day of bullshit insurance hoop jumping.


So good morning rehab.

[J.101]

That sounds horrible all the best with the recovery process

[SourPatchKids]

Stay strong brotha

[Balla_Status]

Damn...first kobe now thorpe?

[Zan Tabak]

And this is why I don't play ball anymore. I'm not gettin paid (not making the NBA or even the D-league ) and I always seem to get injured in one way or another. The risk isn't worth the reward imo.

After my 'playing days' I got into weightlifting, you should give it a try.

Anyway, fast recovery man!

[9erempiree]

Stay strong and think of Kobe. You and Kobe will be rehabbing your way back.

I guess you are going to be a Laker and Kobe fan now. You can relate.

[d.bball.guy]

Stay strong and think of Kobe. You and Kobe will be rehabbing your way back.

I guess you are going to be a Laker and Kobe fan now. You can relate.

But yeah, OP, get well soon and hope for a quick recovery

[Thorpesaurous]

So the last of the hoops has been jumped through. Surgery will be Thursday.

The good news is two things. The surgery is very simple. It's a half hour to an hour procedure, and generally speaking an outpatient process. I should be home that night.
The second good thing is that they're very confident about the outcome of this particular procedure. They're fairly confident that I'll be back to my mediocre self when this is all said and done, with some PT, and just time.

The bad news is the time. I'm looking at 1-2 weeks of letting the wound heal. That's a critical stage, and little to no risk can be taken. Until the sutures come out, I really can't risk anything. Infection could be devesatating, and if they come open, I'm essentially starting the process over. After that there's a 6 week run of absolutely zero weight baring. Again, this is a stage that could see me tear the tendon again, and again, we'd be starting over from scratch. And beyond that, Another six weeks of minimal weight baring. That will start with a boot and crutches, basically where I'm at now. Then move to sneakers and crutches. Then just boot for the last stretch, where I'll be able to walk on it, but it will stabalize the tendon while regain strenghth. That pretty much ends my summer.

This winter had seen me really start to re-introduce myself into playing basketball, and finding men's leagues that fit where I am, and I was really looking forward to continueing that, but I guess that's over now. And my usual role as multi league softball pitcher, because a) I'm willing to have balls rocketed at my crotch all summer, and b) I'm just good enough to not walk in a half dozen runs per game (both genuine skills), is also over this year. Coaching pop warner, which starts at the end of the summer, but that is probably over too.

So looks like I hooked up my fancy internet ready smart tv and signed up for netflix just in time, so expect to see me in the rate the last movie thread a lot, and probably a fair amount in the video game forum.

**** me!

[Bandito]

Stay strong and think of Kobe. You and Kobe will be rehabbing your way back.

I guess you are going to be a Laker and Kobe fan now. You can relate.

Ok I laughed, hope I could rep you.

Hope everything works out for you bro. I had stress fracture on both knees and couldn't do much in the military BMT so I was sent to a medical squadron to get better for four months. Just imagine 4 months not doing sh1t with no internet.

[Thorpesaurous]

Ok I laughed, hope I could rep you.

Hope everything works out for you bro. I had stress fracture on both knees and couldn't do much in the military BMT so I was sent to a medical squadron to get better for four months. Just imagine 4 months not doing sh1t with no internet.

That sounds terrible.

I do have some experience. But my two knee surgeries were like the exact opposite of this.

Surgeries were complicated, exploratory Orthroscopics, because they really didn't know how bad they'd be from the MRI. And a tissue sample retrieved for harvesting fresh cartellidge. As opposed to this one where they really know what they're getting into.

And then those wound up being 1-2 week recoveries each. Really not that bad. As opposed to this one which will be brutal after the fact.

And finally, they still aren't sure how my knees will react over time. They're a great mystery of science. Whereas my achilles they're pretty sure how this will turn out. It's gonna take time and work, but they know really know the end game within reason.

[kNIOKAS]

Best wishes, recuuperate well. Could you take your mind to really do something, while disabled? I'd say, "man, I'd totally learn HTML since I cannot really do anything else anyway". But what happens usually is like "I cannot do it since I'm not at full strenght", and then when in full strenght "I have to do something else, let's keep it for the time that I'm sick or something", and then end up procrastinating whatever.

[Thorpesaurous]

Best wishes, recuuperate well. Could you take your mind to really do something, while disabled? I'd say, "man, I'd totally learn HTML since I cannot really do anything else anyway". But what happens usually is like "I cannot do it since I'm not at full strenght", and then when in full strenght "I have to do something else, let's keep it for the time that I'm sick or something", and then end up procrastinating whatever.

That would be great. I'd love to like ... learn to play the guitar ... or something while I'm sitting around. But the fact is is that I'll wind up watching Movies I never got around to, playing video games, and reading a book or two.

I don't know why that is, but that'll just be the nature of it I'm sure.

[eriX]

That would be great. I'd love to like ... learn to play the guitar ... or something while I'm sitting around. But the fact is is that I'll wind up watching Movies I never got around to, playing video games, and reading a book or two.

I don't know why that is, but that'll just be the nature of it I'm sure.

Watch some documentaries man, one thing about knowledge is that you can never have enough. There bound to be something that interests you where you can spend you energy on and rehab whilst learning.

[rufuspaul]

Tough luck Thorpe. I hope the surgery goes as planned and the rehab progresses quickly. Sending positive vibes.

[Thorpesaurous]

So last night marked my triumphant return to the glorious game of basketball!!!


A mere 9 and half months since tearing the achilles, and probably 10 weeks sooner than really expected. I've been coaching with my buddy his sons' team. We're in the under 9 year old division of a local youth program. It's been fun. Last year we dominated at Under 7, but we were actually good enough that he wanted to skip a division to drive his older son, who's on the cutoff for playing the level down. That would be fine, but all our parents asked for us as coaches, so now I have a bunch of kids who are really a year too young. It's fine, we've won a handfull of games, and the kids have learned a ton. His older son is really very good, and the younger one is only 6 and seriously holds his own.

Anyway, during practice, with the small ball, and on a 9 foot rim, I've been goofing around to a degree to see how my foot felt. I do layup lines. I do pattern drills. I'll run the occasional dribbling suicide. And in spite of some serious stiffness, it's never felt like it was gonna fall off.

So my buddy gets the call from the guy who runs our team for the men's league, and almost hesitantly tells me about it. I call Mark, and ask him if he's got room. I'm almost a perfect guy for a roster. Good enough to trust, but can't really push it playing time wise, so I can really be used for giving people short rests. I'm a talker on the court. Have always gotten along with people I play with. I'm a pass first kind of a dude. And I know enough that I can do things like doodle up plays at ends of games, manage substitions, and that sort of shit.
Mark says sure, just make sure no one has to carry me off the court this year.

I get to our first game last night. And mainly I'm just looking to run. See if I can. And while it's a slow trot, when I focus I can iron out any limp. Next is sliding. Latteral movement, while not something one associates with an achilles, actually concerns me, because the strength in my right calf has evaporated over the course of the year. So I can push one way much better than the other, and my fear is that I'm going to put way more pressure on that right knee than usual because my calf isn't going to be helping much. But again, with some focus, and cheating a bit, I can make it look ok. Fake it till you make it, as the saying goes.

The big test is getting off the ground, and then perhaps the scarier test after that is coming back down. If I try to jump and can't, fine. If I try to jump and can, well then I better hope I have the strenth to land, because I'm coming down one way or the other. So I go through layup lines, and I've been working on this in practice with the kids, jumping off of one foot. I haven't jumped off of one foot since like elementary school. I've been teaching the kids to do it, because it really does teach better form. And then you can go to two feet later on. I also teach jump stopping, but it's too hard to put them together at 7 and 8 years old. I've been a two foot jumper since somewhere about middle school, and had some pop in my day. But I'm really nervous about the amound of force that a jump stop will put on my foot. So I go through lines, and feel ok going off of my left foot. I land in a hoppity sort of 1-2 that reduces a lot of the impact on the healing foot.

We start the game with 8 guys, but a 9th shows up, and unfortunately it sounds like I have 2 more on the roster who aren't there. I'm not looking for too much. We run two 20 minute halves, and my aim was to get two 5 minute stretches out of it. I wound up with about a four minute go in the first half, and about an 8 minute run in the second. I was certainly not my old self. I was hesitant to bring the ball up court, perhaps as much due to rust as anything, because that's really who I am. But I made it up and down the court. Slowly, but I made it.

Once I broke a sweat, I got off a couple times. Two really deliberate shot fakes got my off the bounce. I got into the lane, through a pass fake, and was heading to the hole with my left. I planted that right leg to go up, and just went no where. I got crushed by a foul, and the guy complained that he thought I was gonna jump. I told him I thought I was too. Just didn't happen. One for two from the stripe.

In my second trip out, I was determined to show off some. I threw a couple of wow passes that had the guys on my team cackling from the bench when one kid took one right off the gut. Another slow shot fake got me a little leaning banker that I hit. I got a steal in a one on one fast break defense situation, which is how I hurt myself the first time. Grabbed a couple rebounds. Dove on a loose ball at mid court.

Overall I was pretty happy with my showing.

After the game my buddy's kids came over with my sandals, and after exposing my scar, some of the guys who didn't know me were a little freaked out. I sensed a little regret from one of the guys who got on me for letting a guy snatch a rebound from behind me. But I didn't care. I was just happy to be going again. It's a 10 week 12 game season. I'm not sure how those couple Tue and Thur weeks will play. But I'm confindent I will get better as the season goes on. If the rust comes off my ball handling and I can adjust my stroke to compensate for less legs and less balance. Rework my floater / tear drop / pull up game to compensate for not being able to finish, and I actually think I can be a legit starter on this team, even though I probably won't have the legs to do it.

And the adrenaline kept me up all night. I just can't imagine the day when I stop wanting to play basketball. And when my left achilles tears this season, I guess we'll find out.