My Soccer Injury Story                        
                     Michael Redmond
                 
After completing grad school, I decided to try to get back into playing
soccer (I had played through junior high school, high school, college 
intramurals, and IBM company leagues (mostly without any distinction)
and I loved playing). I found a team by walking into a local Soccer
Locker and asking about what leagues there were. After making a few phone
calls (hypertext like :-) ), I had found my way to a team that needed 
players (and which was playing for fun, so would tolerate my rustiness
and lack of skills). 

I had fun in the first two games. Then the third game, played in the 
pouring rain in the middle of March (yuck), against a good team, and 
we only had 8 players. (I know that wasn't a sentence. Tough. This is
informal writing.) Five minutes into the game, a player did a sliding 
tackle as I was kicking the ball. My ankle felt weaker than I'd ever 
felt it (it was hard to put my weight on it at first). It was the first 
sign I had that I was older than I used to be (turning 30 hadn't been a 
crisis at all).

Of course, since we only had 8 players, we didn't have a sub, so I kept 
playing, trying to conserve my best efforts for when they were most
important. 

At the half, we were down 6 nil (6-0 in soccer talk, probably equivalent
to 42-0 or so in football). My teammates, having noticed my diminished
mobility, asked if I'd like to play goalie in the second half. I gladly
accepted, even though I hadn't really played goalie before. (I'd SEEN
people play goalie before ! The idea seems to be to come out and get the
ball in dangerous situations before the opponent has a chance to get to
it)

I actually made about 10 saves, some of them difficult; and the final 
score was only 13 nil (probably equivalent to 100-0 in football). 

So the game's over, I'm covered in mud from head to toe, my ankle is
really swelled up ("boy, this must be a pretty bad sprain"), and I'm 
due to help friends of ours move (friends who had helped us move) that
afternoon. 

I expect my wife is going to be protective and say don't go, but she
doesn't think it's anything. I try to help move, but I'm not much use,
maybe move a half dozen boxes and then have to give up (get free pizza
too, what a free-loader!). I decide that I will need to see a doctor.

The next day, I sit at home, amazed at how much it hurts. The doctors
office wants me to have x-rays done at an x-ray lab, and the x-ray lab
can't fit me at a time that fits my schedule (don't want to cancel 
class !) until Wed (this is Mon). So instead, I decide to go to a Doc N
a Box when Susan gets home (I can't drive at this point). They take
x-rays, and put me in a cast-like splint. When I call about the results
they tell me it's not broken, then when I go back in, they say it
has a crack. I'm thinking that this must be the more profitable 
diagnosis, but the specialist they send me to concurs (and it turns out
that my regular doctor would have sent me to the same specialist).

I'm on crutches for two months (first time ever for me), but fortunately 
the specialist puts me in this lace up brace instead of a cast (felt 
great), so I can bathe, and drive. Susan ends up cutting the grass through
most of the spring, and vows to never do it again. I'm on physical 
therapy (tremendously expensive, even paying for just 20%) until my
insurance changes July 1 (had to get over to the HMO for hoped to be 
coming baby). It's more than a year before I run without knowing my
ankle is there.

And this was a small, tiny break !!!

Haven't played soccer since; can't afford another injury!

In younger days, this kind of thing resulted in twisted, or at worst
sprained, ankles. This is the end of being young.