The Injury

Ok, it's time to get this blog off the ground. The logical place to start is a description of how the injury occured. It so happened that on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008, I had gone for a skiing trip in beautiful Killington, Vermont. This was my 2nd time skiing, ever! My first time had been about six years ago. Initially I had wanted to get ski lessons. However, the timing for the group lessons was inconvenient, and after my expenses of buying ski pants and renting ski equipment I surely didn't want to pay for private lessons! :) Instead, after some quick tips from a skiing expert friend, I hit the slopes!! The bunny slopes, that is!

The snow was perfect. The day was filled with fun moments of attempting to ski, getting scared, and falling down. This was tiring, but pretty much what I expected going in. Toward the end of the day, I had mastered the bunny slope quite well, and was able to do the whole thing without falling. It was time to graduate to the harder slopes, a decision that would come back to haunt me. No, not the double diamond blacks (though that would have made for a far better story). No, it was simply the easiest green on Killington mountain, the "Snowshed" trail. Yes, I know what you're thinking right now. Go ahead and laugh. :) This particular trail comes straight down and has a fairly low incline. Looked easy enough from the bottom. I decided to give it a try. After taking the lift to the top, I remember getting quite couragous and thinking it would be easy. Although it was quite high, I decided I would do it in parts, taking falling breaks in between. That plan sounded great until I started going down for the first time. Boy, it was fast!! However, I managed to control my speed somewhat, and fell a few times. Having gone about a third of the way down, I made a dire mistake. I let my guard down, I ignored proper form, and made the number one mistake in skiing, I panicked.

After picking up a bit more speed than I was used to, I started thinking, "wow, this is really fast, I need to slow down." Subconsiously, my mind agreed and said to hell with it, lets just fall down. Unfortunately, that fall was horrible. Instead of controlling it, I sort of just leaned back and to the left. The first thing I felt was a horrible twisting of my leg. I immediately knew this had not happened in my earlier falls, and could be bad. A millisecond later, the immense pain in the area of my left knee confirmed this hypothesis. :) I would later learn that ACL tears are usually indicated by a loud pop. Strangely enough, I do not remember such a pop. But maybe I just didn't notice it in my panicked situation. So there I was sitting in the snow for a few minutes, massaging my knee. The pain actually went away pretty quickly. There was a reason for this too, as I later found out. Tearing the ligament would have immediately severed all the nerves around it, making the pain go away. But in my ACL-uneducated state there on the mountain, I took this as a sign that the injury was minor and would hopefully go away. I was so sure of this, I turned down an offer for help from a friendly fellow and decided to walk down the mountain. So I walked! In about 15 minutes I was at the bottom, and ready to call it a day. That is where I got my first scare that this might be a more serious injury. When stepping down a small stair, I bent my leg a bit more than usual and noticed a sudden immense pain. But I let it pass, and eventually found myself driving back to New York. That's right, I was well enough to drive!

By the time I had returned home to New York five hours later, it was pretty evident that something was quite wrong. The swelling on my knee was now obvious, and it was very painful to bend it at all, even slightly, in any direction. I was getting more worried, but decided to sleep it off. The next day, on Monday, I didn't notice any improvement, and the swelling was pretty bad. I decided to not go in to work that day, and do what I dreaded the most -- set up an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon. Thankfully, I was able to get an appointment for the very next day. By this time, I was limping pretty badly. It was difficult to get around anywhere. Stairs were particularly annoying, as I had to go sideways. But I still had my hopes up that this was nothing serious and I'd be back to normal pretty quickly. The next day, this would all change, when I'd get the shocking news of what had actually happened. But the exciting story of my first doctor's visit will have to wait for next time.

Good night, and thanks for reading!