Back on the Field

I felt a sharp pain, suddenly stopped, and fell to the ground. I had to be carried off the field. I didn’t even get hit by anything, something just felt like it snapped. There was an ice-pack on my leg, slowly freezing it until I couldn’t feel it anymore. Right after the game finished, we went straight to the ER.

There we waited. And waited. And waited. It felt like forever until we actually got to see a doctor. They examined me. Took x-rays. My temperature. My blood-pressure. Nothing was wrong. Except for the pain. No broken bones. No fever. Normal blood-pressure. They gave me morphine of course to help with the pain. The excruciating pain. It didn’t help that much. The doctors were inept at finding what was wrong. So, we went home, with a brace and some morphine.

Later that night, the pain became unbearable. My toes started to get numb, and we knew something wasn’t right. We went back to the ER and waited some more. Once we finally got to see a doctor I was crying in pain. They still couldn’t figure anything out. My dad was the only one with an idea of what was wrong. They wouldn’t listen to him. They didn’t trust him because he was just a stomach doctor, what did he know about ortho. The ortho doctor actually there couldn’t do anything because he was just an intern. We had to wait for the attending to arrive before we could do anything.

Compartment Pressure.

That’s what my dad inferred.

That’s what the doctors didn’t think. Not possible, they said, too rare.

Just do the test and we will see, my dad suggested.

The test was almost as bad as the pain. They just poked my leg with a rod that would read the amount of pressure building up in my leg. The test was positive. The numbers were so high we had to go into emergency surgery. I’ve never had a huge surgery before. This would be my first one. I didn’t want to. I was scared. But, I got a load of anesthesia and went to sleep.

I woke up, groggy, and unaware of where I was. I’ve been out for a lot longer than they thought I should have been. Probably from too much anesthesia. There was a big pump coming out of my bed. Collecting blood. From my leg. Into a bin. On the side of my bed. I never looked at it, it wasn’t a very pleasant sight. I slept most the time - the drugs were the ones to blame for that. People visited me, but I don’t remember much. They all gave me gifts, so I had an exorbitant amount of flowers and “GET WELL SOON” cards.

A couple weeks later I got stitches (that was almost as gross as the blood sucking tube connected to my leg).

Couple weeks after that, I finally got to leave the hospital.

After another week, I went back to school.

A week after that, I got my stitches removed. And then a whole bunch of physical therapy to start walking again. First a wheelchair (at school), then crutches (with difficulty), then regular walking, then some running, more PT and training.

And after all that (a couple months later), I got back on the field.

~ Jun-Young H.