Commanders Post at The Warpath - View Single Post - What's the worst sports related injury you've ever had?

Summo · 11-08-2006, 02:52 PM

About five years ago I tore my Achilles tendon playing flag football. I was playing center and I turned to run in the opposite direction and it felt like someone shot me in the back of the leg. The doctor that re-attached it said I was lucky, he had just enough to re-sew it back together otherwise he would have to had shortened it and I would be walking with a limp the rest of my life.

But that wasn't the worst part of the injury; about a month after the surgery I had a sharp pain in my calf for a couple of days. Finally one night as I was eating dinner it felt like my heart stopped for a second and I couldn't catch my breath. I laid down for a while and it just got worse, so I told my wife to call an ambulance and she knew I wasn’t right because I never want to go to a doctor, let alone a hospital. The ambulance drivers had no idea what was wrong with me; they kept asking me if I ate something out of the ordinary.

When I got to the hospital I was in the emergency room laying in the bed and all of a sudden it felt like my head was spinning in two different directions at the same time. I blacked out and when I woke up there was a bunch of doctors and nurses standing around me telling me to wake up. I had a major pulmonary embolism, actually two, a little one at home and the major one in the ER. The lung doctor that saved my life by injecting me with what he describe as a large dose of TPT (a blood thinner) said that the size of that embolism was the largest he has ever seen in 20 years working in the ER. He also said that if the big one would have struck me at home I would have been dead by the time the ambulance got there. All of this for the sport I love.

But after all of this I look at this experience as a positive one. It opened my eyes and made me realize that I should be taking better care of my body. In the last five years I have totally changed the way I eat resulting in a 120 pound weight loss and I now go to the gym five days a week to exercise. I have two kids and a beautiful wife that I don’t want to abandon, like I almost did.

11-08-2006, 02:52 PM	#47
Summo The Bringer of Digital Bling Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Lindenhurst NY Age: 54 Posts: 893	Re: What's the worst sports related injury you've ever had? About five years ago I tore my Achilles tendon playing flag football. I was playing center and I turned to run in the opposite direction and it felt like someone shot me in the back of the leg. The doctor that re-attached it said I was lucky, he had just enough to re-sew it back together otherwise he would have to had shortened it and I would be walking with a limp the rest of my life. But that wasn't the worst part of the injury; about a month after the surgery I had a sharp pain in my calf for a couple of days. Finally one night as I was eating dinner it felt like my heart stopped for a second and I couldn't catch my breath. I laid down for a while and it just got worse, so I told my wife to call an ambulance and she knew I wasn’t right because I never want to go to a doctor, let alone a hospital. The ambulance drivers had no idea what was wrong with me; they kept asking me if I ate something out of the ordinary. When I got to the hospital I was in the emergency room laying in the bed and all of a sudden it felt like my head was spinning in two different directions at the same time. I blacked out and when I woke up there was a bunch of doctors and nurses standing around me telling me to wake up. I had a major pulmonary embolism, actually two, a little one at home and the major one in the ER. The lung doctor that saved my life by injecting me with what he describe as a large dose of TPT (a blood thinner) said that the size of that embolism was the largest he has ever seen in 20 years working in the ER. He also said that if the big one would have struck me at home I would have been dead by the time the ambulance got there. All of this for the sport I love. But after all of this I look at this experience as a positive one. It opened my eyes and made me realize that I should be taking better care of my body. In the last five years I have totally changed the way I eat resulting in a 120 pound weight loss and I now go to the gym five days a week to exercise. I have two kids and a beautiful wife that I don’t want to abandon, like I almost did.