Walking Wounded

I took great pleasure in watching the Seahawks triumph on Sunday afternoon, of course, as they felled the Redskins at FedEx Field in Washington. Although calling that bog painted green a "field" is disingenuous. Seriously, Mr. Snyder, spend some money. You own one of the most valuable franchises in all of professional sports. The least you can do is give your team a quality playing surface.

It's unclear whether the horrid field conditions contributed to the terrible (re)injury of Redskins wünderkind QB Robert Griffin III at the end of the game, but watching that play – where his right knee hyperextended and he crumpled into the mud – left me aghast. It was disastrous for him, for his team, for the sport at which he excels and is expected to carry on his shoulders for the next decade. He possesses a stunning skillset and a dynamic personality to match his dynamic game. Even as a rookie, it is clear that RG3 is one of the league's brightest stars. His descent from the heavens back into the world of mere mortals was shocking and humbling to see. It's hard enough to watch that as a passive spectator, seeing an athlete as superior as him collapse like that. But for someone like myself, who had my love of playing a sport and competing essentially ended in a split second, images like that have a tendency to give me flashbacks. You can call it an athlete's version of PTSD.

RG3 was playing hurt, of course, and there were questions after the game hurled towards Redskins coach Mike Shanahan as to why he left RG3 in the game, when it was clear his mobility was limited and that his already troublesome right knee was only getting worse. The answer to this question, of course, is nuanced and coloured in shades of grey. The only black and white, in the end, is the result on the scoreboard which showed Seattle 24, Washington 14.

It can be debated whether or not Shanahan should've left him out there – personally, I thought he shouldn't – as the game progressed and it became clear that a) RG3 couldn't play to his usual level, and b) The Seahawks knew this and were taking over the game because of it. He made the same mistake that a lot of coaches do in this instance – he asked RG3, and RG3 insisted he could keep playing. And that, of course, is what a competitor is ALWAYS going to say. (Well, OK, maybe not always – Jay Cutler pulled himself out of a playoff game for the Chicago Bears and was labeled things like a coward and a quitter, even though it was later revealed he had a knee injury more serious than first thought.) But that's what a competitor's instincts are going to lead them to say. The objective is to win the game, after all. That's all that matters in the moment. You can go on being hurt after the game is over. You'll have time between this game and the next to heal up.

I know that my first thought, after my ankle gave way, was "I'll just walk it off."

I had started off the game by grabbing the opening tip, driving to the basket and dunking it, and our hapless opponents' ensuing possession resulted in a turnover. Our center sprung me on the fast break with a perfect outlet pass and I was driving to the basket for yet another dunk when I planted my right foot and my ankle twisted to the right. I jumped straight up anyway, and landed on a trailing defender's foot, and my compromised right ankle then twisted to the left. It was a split second in time, the whole motion, after which I collapsed onto the court much as RG3 collapsed into the mud.

I got helped to the bench but I refused to sit down, attempting to put weight on my right foot, figuring that it was just a sprain and that I would be back in the game in a matter of minutes. I would be OK. It hurt, but I could walk it off. There were far more important issues at hand, like winning a basketball game.

This was nonsense thinking, of course. After being persuaded to sit down, one of the guys ran to the locker room and returned with a trashcan filled with ice water. I wanted no part in icing my foot, and it was only when I pried the shoe off that reality started to sink in – with the rapid swelling in my ankle engulfing my whole foot, it looked less like a foot and more like an American football.

This happened in November 1989. I was 20 years old, and on a study abroad program in Great Britain. In that split second of time, I broke my right ankle in a basketball game. And saying I "broke" my ankle is sort of a simple way of putting it – I broke bones, tore ligaments, and also cracked the tendon that operates the joint. It was a complex injury which a variety of factors, an injury that surpassed the ability of the G.P.'s at the local hospital to diagnose and treat it. They were not incompetent, mind you. They did their best with the information that was available to them. But they didn't have the sort of technology available to them, like an MRI, to make such a diagnosis. They could see a bone break on an X-ray so they put a cast on my foot and I limped around Europe with a cane and a below-knee walker during my Christmas vacation. It was only when, a couple months later, I went to an appointment with an astute and savvy physical therapist, who jiggled my newly uncased ankle about for a few moments and listened to various crackles and pops and said "Oh dear. This is not good at all."

I'm paraphrasing a bit here, since I don't really understand medical stuff all that well, but essentially what had happened is that while treating the broken bone through immobilizing the ankle was a good idea, the real problem was the damn tendon, which had cracked and then calcified over. This meant it was extremely weak and susceptible to reinjury. (My right ankle is now also visibly wider than my left if you look at them.) The physio said to me at the time, "you will heal up reasonably well in the short-term. In time, of course – 15-20 years from now – you may start to have some larger problems …"

And 20+ years later, I can't run.

My right ankle is so weak that I've reinjured it stepping off a curb. The last time I tried to stand up when my foot fell asleep, I stepped on the castor of a chair and wound up in the emergency room, very legitimately afraid that i had rebroken it. My balance is completely shot because my ankle cannot function properly – if I attempt to ice skate or rollerblade, I almost immediately fall over. And over time, of course, I changed my gait, so now I have a variety of problems with my right foot and right knee. And my ankle aches anytime I overdo it – today "overdoing" it meant walking 4-5 miles. It's a constant reminder of one moment in time more than 20 years ago which has done more to realter the course of my life than any other particular moment.

And playing basketball again after that was pretty much out of the question. I was a late bloomer, had developed a love of the game and had gotten suddenly, surprisingly, insanely good at it after years of frustration, but I no longer had the sort of power and agility. Before the injury, I had a monstrous vertical leap. Afterwards, I could barely jump over the phone book. I mean, I could've carried on and goofed around on the court every now and then, but once I realized that I couldn't do the sorts of things I had been able to do before, it didn't seem worth it to continue.

Well, I could've had a gigantic, after-the-fact surgical procedure that was nasty and costly and would've meant months of rehab, and it didn't seem worth it to me to go through all of that. In retrospect, maybe I should've done so. But any time a surgeon starts off by saying "first we have to rebreak …" it's never a good sign.

All of this came up for me again in an instant, watching the end of the Seahawks-Redskins game. I hate seeing serious injuries. They elicit a visceral reaction, a cringe after which many of the details from the moment I broke my ankle return to my conscience and become crystal clear to me once again. And while I think Shanahan should've taken RG3 out much earlier in the game, when his knee clearly began to hamper his play, I know that I wouldn't have wanted out. I would've wanted to play, to try to win. Because that's what athletes do. That's what competing is all about. You give all that you can to achieve the goal.

Injuries are a part of sports, of course, and something anyone who participates in athletics ultimately loses at is having a healthy and fully-functioning body. Almost every competitor gives it up, eventually, when being hurt all the time takes away their ability to participate at the level they want to attain or achieve, and it's likely they'll feel the effects of it for the rest of their lives. (And it's not just competitive athletes, mind you – I've known professional dancers who've had more knee surgeries than offensive linemen.) Nasty, nasty injuries. But at the time, you don't actually THINK it will happen to you. If you did, then why would you ever play in the first place?

And I don't regret playing basketball and getting hurt and not being able to run 20+ years later. I regret that I got hurt and was no longer able to play, because I loved to play. And since I'd come late to really enjoying the game of basketball, and had just begun to truly embrace it as my own at the time, it was as if it had been stolen from me. I've really missed it.

Then again, if I hadn't broken my ankle, then, well, who knows? I probably would've just broken a wrist or dislocated an elbow or something. Oh, wait, I did dislocate my elbow. Never mind …