My Constant Companion

I must have been around ten or eleven years old when I first hurt my knee. My approach to hockey was kamikaze style so it is ironic that ground zero for my bad knee was a gopher hole. Running through a field, I stepped in a gopher hole and hyper extended my knee by jamming it backwards while traveling full speed. The injury did not seem that ominous at the time but then again, nothing did at that age.

Fast forward three years and I am grossing out my sister by popping my knee by flexing it and straightening it while laying on the couch. I think every boy considers a skill like that as a superpower. My friend at school turned his eyelids inside out. Me, I popped my knee. What I did not know at the time was that popping noise was torn cartilage jamming in my knee joint and popping out. Cartilage has no blood flow so there is no pain associated with the tear.

Fast forward three more years and I am stepping up unto a platform and my knee completely locks, preventing me from straightening it out. My mom takes me to the doctor and he prescribes some pain killers and sends me home. I am not sure what he was thinking but his lack of proper investigation and action has had a major impact on the rest of my life. Two weeks later, my knee unlocked on its own and I was back to grossing out my sister.

Fast forward two more years. I have been playing hockey for six years on a damaged knee and I am now training in Kung Fu. Standing up from a high back stance with throw, my knee locks again. This time I head to the ER myself. One traumatic arthogram later and I am being booked for emergency surgery. The arthogram showed I had a big torn piece of cartilage jamming my knee joint. The tear was so large that orthoscopic surgery was not going to cut it. At least I have a scar big enough to name (Clancy) and the subject of a lot of conversations.

Waking up after the surgery I was in a lot of pain. Eye watering, lights flashing, blinding pain. Cartilage is not supposed to hurt so what the heck? My surgeon visited me a couple of hours later and informed me that I was living with my tear for so long, the piece of cartilage flopping back and forth into my knee joint had wore a divot in the joint about the size of a nickel. He had to do some joint reconstruction to smooth it out the best he could.

It was a year, almost to the day, before I could fully flex my knee again. The swelling took forever to dissipate but that is normal recovery timeframe for the reconstruction that took place. My ability to flex the knee returned but my ability to use the knee the way I did before the surgery is gone forever. The psychology of such an injury is fascinating.

Decades later with five knee surgeries under my belt, I can definitively say that pain and inflammation have been my constant companions. With companions such as them a person learns a lot. Inflammation is self-propagating. Load-bearing, inflamed knees get damaged. Damage causes more inflammation. And so the cycle continues.

Tuesday’s brown belt class was an eye opener for me. I discovered that I no longer have the range in my knees to demonstrate certain techniques. When the heck did I cross that threshold? It would seem that I am entering a phase of my kung fu life that may require me to adjust my approach and my expectations.

I am thankful for the lifestyle I have been able to enjoy. My activity level now is not much different than what it was when I was a teenager. I realize that nothing is for free. A lifetime of rough and tumble contact comes with a price. It was, and continues to be, absolutely worth it.

“The first wealth is health.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)