Overcoming an injury

When you love a sport and all you do and think about is that sport then having an injury is probably one of the worst things that can happen to you. Unfortunately when I was a freshman in high school I had horrible knee pains which I soon found out that I had torn my meniscus which is a disk of cartilage that serves as a cushion between the ends of bones that meet at a joint. I thought my life was over, soccer was my life and a stupid tear in my knee was trying to take it away from me.

The doctor told me that I needed to get knee surgery and to recuperate from surgery takes months. I ended up getting the surgery at the end of the summer and I didn't play at all after I got the MRI to play it safe. I missed half of my high school season and that summer my club team went to Europe for a soccer tournament and I had to sit on the side lines and watch them play all of the European teams. It was horrible because playing against European teams was my dream and it all went down the drain because of my knee. After my surgery I didn't play for about 2 months and I went to physical therapy 3 times a week. When I finally started playing again my knee swelled up like a balloon and continued to do so after every time I played. Something wasn't right so my mom took me to the doctor again and he had told me that I retore it, would need another surgery and that I should stop playing soccer. I was extremely upset and I didn't know what do. I was only thinking the worst and figured my knee would never be back to normal.

I got the second surgery that winter and the recuperation process went much smoother than the first one. I tried palying indoor again which was ok at first but then my knee started swelling again. By this time I had had enough and was tired of sitting out. My mom stopped taking me to that doctor because whatever he was doing wasn't working. That is when I started going to a doctor downstate. The doctor I went to downstate was the doctor for the Detroit Tigers baseball team. He did not give me surgery but every 3 months he would inject some type of steroid into my knee to relive the pain and keep it from swelling. It ended up working like a charm. I still had pain now and then after that but nothing like before.

I ended up sitting out from soccer for almost 2 years because of my knee problem. I always wonder how much better I would be today if I would have never gotten injured. It was definintely a life changing experience for me because I had to learn to deal with the fact that the biggest part in my life was being taken away from me.