Please read part one and part two of this series. If you do not want to miss the next part please subscribe to Kick2Kick.
Paul Haselby said in a recent interview of his frustrations of not playing, something I can relate to.The Aftermath
Paul Haselby said in a recent interview of his frustrations of not playing, something I can relate to.
I got to the hospital and waited a few hours for the doctor to X-ray my knee and confirm what I already knew, it wasn’t broken. She advised me to take a couple of Panadols and see my G.P. What a waste of time that was……
The following week I went to see a specialist sports doctor in the area who could properly diagnose the injury and check out the extent of it. My knee by that stage had swollen to the size of a basketball.
So the doctor got out the biggest syringe I have ever seen and proceeded to stick it into my knee. I am not the greatest fan of needles ( who is ) but it helped to alleviate the pressure. He then started to pull my knee in every possible direction almost doing a 360 degree just to test the damage and my pain threshold. Obviously it was ligament damage and he said it looked like an A.C.L and possibly a P.C.L (Posterior Cruciate Ligament ) tear.
But we wouldn’t be able to tell till I had further scans.
So I was sent up to see another specialist, a guy who directly deals with knees and he booked me in for a M.R.I scan. I didn’t have a clue what this involved but if it helped find out how bad my knee was I was happy to go along with it. M.R.I basically stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging . It uses a magnetic field and radio waves to take images of the body. A normal X-ray takes images of ‘hard stuff’ like the calcium of the bones of the skeletal system. M.R.I focuses on the ’soft stuff’ of the body like tissue, organs and ligaments. I had to lay flat on what looked like a coffin. The M.R.I machine has this large table that slides into a round cylinder. This round cylinder contains a powerful magnet that spins around creating a magnetic field. The soft tissue of the body contains water molecules and the magnetic field effects Protons found in water. These Protons become magnetised and send out an echo in response to the radio waves. a computer then interprets these echoes and is able to form an image of the human body. Talk about complicated!
I got down to the bare essentials in nothing but an open back gown, take off my watch, chain and lie very still for what seemed a long time. The nurse placed some headphones on my head with some very average, elevator style music. You have to lie very still on these things otherwise the images come out all blurred. I thought to myself, ‘how am I gonna manage that?’ I struggle to stay still for 5 minutes let alone an hour. As I lay there you start to become self conscious of your body. You wonder to yourself, ‘did I flinch?’, ‘I think my arm moved’.
I’m not a big fan of hospitals and waiting. I spent an hour getting to the hospital, two hours waiting to get in and this scan was going to take close to an hour. I didn’t want to have to repeat the procedure again. I was actually glad that the music was so boring because it made me relax, relax so much that I fell asleep on the table! The nurse had to wake me when the scans had finished. Some more waiting…I wouldn’t know the extent of the damage until my specialist had seen the scans and I was booked to see him.
Everyone says well at least you’re young……
I was hearing that from everyone. Like if as that makes it any better. I kept thinking well look at the positives I am young and I have time. And this injury would take time to heal. I thought yeah a year and I’ll be back, what’s a year when you’re 19 years old. I still kept thinking yeah its like an hamstring injury just takes longer to heal, no problems. You start to worry a bit when you think to yourself , ‘when am I going to properly walk again?’
Playing Football at the moment, was last on my priorities list.
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March 19th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
I know what it is like trying to stay still for an hour or so for a scan. So annoying and actually really hard, I remember a nurse not being happy with me and she was actually yelling at me through the microphone at me
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March 19th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Haha, yeah I think my complain about scans pales in comparison to what you went through mate, but yeah I fell asleep!