My knees are bad. I mean, they are really bad. When I wake up and get out of bed, they become Rice Crispies with all their snapping and cracking, and of course loud popping. They start the day stiff as iron, and it gets worse until, in the evenings, they’re just radiating with aches and pain. It’s simply crazy how knobby and gnarled they are. I’m 30, and am already contemplating knee replacement surgery.
I probably brought this on my self.
When I was born, I had many health problems and deformities of my hands. From the very beginning of my school age childhood, i was teased, taunted, and insulted daily by fellow children and even some teachers who would talk to me as if I was retarded - despite the fact that I was in a school for the gifted. No matter what I did or said, nothing ever changed. Even today, I get disgusted looks from strangers, turned down for jobs after giving an amazing interview but accidentally revealing my hands, and talked to by store and restaurant employees as if I were a feeble gimp.
So, in an everpresent environment of scorn and pity, I learned right away that no matter how smart I was, no one would ever know unless I could prove myself physically. This was a hard thing to do when I was young, because I had several surgeries a year on my hands and arms, from the time I was born to the age of ten. After that, the surgeries slowed down but never stopped until I was 15. I’ve had three since I was 20, but they were pretty far apart. Needless to say, I had a hard time being athletic as a young boy with casts on one or both arms.
I didn’t care how hard it was.
I remember shooting hoops with a cast on each arm, and when they made the casts go past my elbows to stop me from using my arms so much, I would spend an hour sawing off areas to give me a better range of motion. I would play football with my friends in the neighborhood, and on the playground; sometimes with a cast on, and sometimes two. I never had any problems with my feet or legs, and they were naturally strong and powerful from birth. So, the one sport I was actually encouraged to play by my family, was soccer.
I was determined to become strong and athletic, and whenever possible make my hands do all the things anyone else could. Martial arts were a huge help with creating upper body strength, and further developing my legs into muscular tree trunks. With all these activities, I put myself completely into showing the world I was capable just to get a chance for people to get to know me. It still infuriates me that it takes that much for me to get the possibility of respect from others, but nothing will change the way society looks at its members.
Anyway, back to my knees and how it’s my fault they’re destroyed at such a young age. I played all these sports constantly - and I played hard. Diving on the floor for a loose basketball, or driving through a crowd of defenders with a football, or snapping a high side-kick in a martial arts sparring session; everything I did put a pounding into my body. My knees were the primary targets of most of this punishment.
By the age of thirteen, I had calcium deposits on each knee, from hard knocks on the floor or whatever else there was to hit them on. As time went by, these deposits got bigger, and so sensitive that when I bump them now, it is painful enough to drop me to the ground. Just looking at my childhood, you see a lot of activity, but it doesn’t seem enough to really make such a severe effect, right?
Right.
Childhood was just the beginning, though. After becoming good at many sports, I made several teams in middle and high school. By the time I was fifteen, I was on the varsity football team, varsity soccer team, and JV basketball and hockey teams. Football was my sport of choice. I was a freight-train running back, with the power to drive through tacklers like they were sheets blowing in the wind. I wasn’t extremely fast, but I didn’t have to be. I just had to tap into the yawning abyss of rage that filled my soul since I was a boy. Nothing could stop me then.
Just in football, alone, I pounded and punished my knees without mercy. I felt no pain, I felt no injuries, I just kept running. Flattening the opponent was the best medicine for my aches and pains. With the other sports I played in high school, and the martial arts training I continued, it wasn’t just my knees that took the beating of a lifetime. My shoulders began to ache in cold weather; my hands, which always hurt, were starting to become stiff and constantly achy; and my neck became so stiff that I could just sneeze and make it pop.
After high school, my sports playing lessened, but I still palyed hours of basketball a day, and pickup football games whenever possible - and it always had to be full contact. These two things did almost as much damage to my knees as all the team play before. I would come back to my dorm after a six hour seesion of b-ball, and just colapse on my bed. If I wanted to ice my knees, I had to do it immediately, or I would never be able to get up for ice after hitting that mattress.
At this time, I also got bitten by the long-distance hiking bug. I hiked a handful of sections on the Appalachian Trail, and put on about seventeen to twenty miles a day when I worked in the wilderness with juvenile corrections. Looking back, I can’t believe any part of my body survived the level of abuse I put it through. All I ever wanted was to get just a little more respect, and a lot less hurt feelings - and I paid no attention to the price it was charging to my body.
When I finally blew out my right knee, the surgeon told me after the reconstruction that it looked like a grenade went off inside my joint. Further x-rays confirmed that similar damage was done to the left knee as well. The only difference between the two was that I broke the left ankle and was off that leg for 6 to 8 weeks. My right leg was left with the responsibility of doing all the work for my 200 pounds of muscle. You can still see a visible difference between the musculature of each leg. It’s not a huge difference, but probably saved my left knee from the same fate.
I debated with myself about whether I should tell you how I blew out the knee… and I guess I will as long as you hold your laughter until a later time. You promise? Ok.
I tore my ACL, my PCL, and my meniscular ligament… drum roll please… playing kickball with a bunch of Girl Scouts. I worked for the county office of the Girl Scouts as their athletics director, and just had to participate in all the programs I ran. It was humiliating tell that to the doctors and surgeons in the E.R.
I was 22 then, and after the knee healed, I started playing basketball again, hiking long distances, and weight training to get my legs back to their massive former selves. I got stronger, kept healing, and didn’t stop the intensity of my life.
Now, I sit still and the knees ache. I move around and the knees pop, ache, and sometimes just give out at random times. I got sick this spring with a still unidentified illness/condition that causes fluid to constantly build up in my lungs. For some odd reason, beyond making it hard to breathe, and giving me intermittent chest pain, but I also strangely have a lot more stiffness and pain in my joints - especially the knees.
Through all the suffering and self-abuse, I wouldn’t change a thing about my choice to push myself beyond the physical limits everyone tried to impose upon me. I still disgust some and receive insults and scornful scowls from most other people. But for those who get to know me, they first see my ability to be as good or better than they are at most sports, but then actually look past the ugly hands to see a smart, funny, charming, and sensitive man just wanting a little respect - and maybe free knee replacement.
