St. Patrick's Day Disaster

How a fraction of a second can change your life...

When I woke up in the morning, thankfully my head wasn't too badly off despite all of the wine from the night before. Particularly as Sophie and I weren't playing squash until noon, I took the opportunity to sleep in for a bit. Apparently Sophie forgot and showed up an hour early, but I was right on time, and we went downstairs to play.

To my surprise, I lost the first two games, as my game just wasn't on form. Yet, in the next two, I was able to stage a comeback, and pretty effectively shut Sophie down. So at the final game, the score was 2-2, and we were playing for glory.

What happened next happened so quickly, it still shocks me. I was crossing the court from left to right, reaching for the ball, when all of a sudden my left knee went out from under me. I felt a "pop", and suddenly I was on the floor, absolutely screaming in agony.

The pain was so intense, I could barely even think to yell for Sophie to call an ambulance. I thought I knew what pain was after recently surviving my tooth infection, but this put even that intense pain to shame. I found myself terrified to even open my eyes and look at my knee, because I swear I thought I was going to look down and see my knee popped out of its socket, or my leg twisted at some grotesque angle.

The pain was absolutely blinding for about 30-60 seconds, I was seeing stars and thought I might pass out from the pain. But then all of a sudden, it started to ease up, until slowly, over the course of 5 minutes, I was able to roll over, sit up and flex my knee. Within 10 minutes, I could stand and walk. So this was surprising. Was I badly injured?

My knee definitely still felt "funny" though. I tried running a bit, and was fine as long as I was in a straight line but I couldn't do corners. Sophie suggested we might still hit the ball around for a bit, which we did for the next 10 minutes, and then went back to the ladies changing room to sit and chat and keep my knee up for a bit. Had a fun gossip session where she moaned about Witty Windsor Boy and I googled "ACL injuries". I was hen able to walk home, but was definitely limping. Although I was free from shooting pains while just sitting still, I found it wasn't a good idea to move around too much. My knee didn't swell up too much, but it did not like bending and felt rather stiff.

Being sensible, I decided to skip going to watch the rugby in Highbury & Islington (such a shame, as it was England vs Ireland, on St. Patrick's Day), although I did end up getting a play-by-play of the game from the Tall South African. Funny that finally he was watching a game whilst I was missing it!

However it's not like I ever do very well sitting still, and so in the evening since I was due to go out to a "girlie dinner" organised my the wife of my friend Ali, it seemed like a good quiet activity to go to. So I wrapped my leg in a compression bandage and hobbled out the door (taking forever on the stairs with my leg that wouldn't bend!)

I had been unsure about the dinner, after the dull disaster that was the last "girlie dinner" I went to, although this turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Both because my friend Ali came home unexpectedly a day early from his skiing trip and joined us for dinner, and because the conversation turned out to be more stimulating than I'd feared.

Ali's wife graciously allowed the two of us to sit together so that we could catch up (as he really is my dearest friend), and we had a good time talking about our college's new master, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Which then led on to a discussion about the problems he's had as the head of the Church of England, including the thorny issues of gay marriage and women bishops. Which then led to a discussion about gay families and adoption, and whether "traditional families" were really best for children. It was a really lively and interesting debate, and we all didn't leave until after 11 PM, we were all having such a good time.

The walk home was painful (I almost considered calling a cab), but luckily I made it home and to bed, and with my leg propped up for a while!