When I could stand up normally, I realized that my knee had something wrong. I couldn’t either jump or walk normally and the pain was horrible, unbearable and pungent. Afterwards, I had to walk all the way back to my house. I cursed the puddle of water that made me slipped all day long. But, despite all the pain I suffered, I continued playing during the week. The next weekend, I woke up and I tried to lift my knee, something normal for anybody, but I couldn’t. In that moment I said:”Dude, this is serious!!!” and I told mom and dad; they took me to the hospital and doctors discovered that I had my patellar tendon strained and a meniscus fissure. They forbid me to play basketball for a year, and I’ve never been the same player since that morning. About a year of therapy and six months of training took me to get in shape for the next season. But, the coach didn’t want to take risks with me, and he didn’t sign me up to be part of the team that year, even though I could train with the team in order to increase and recover my strength and skills.
High school ended for me and University was my destiny. At this point of my life, I slowed down my basketball playing due to the lack of leisure time and the fact that I didn’t know people who played here in Talca. Somehow, one day studying alone I realized that I was holding a cigarette, even worst, I was smoking it and when I tried to quit it, I couldn’t. Now, my knee injury interfered in a natural way with my game, and therefore decreased my performance at the court. On the other hand, by smoking I was decreasing my own pulmonary capacity and, at the same time, interfere with my normal game. And, what is the reason? There is no reason for smoking, some people do that to be socially accepted, and I don’t know why I smoke. Maybe one party night I bought a package of cigarettes and I decided to smoke unconsciously, and I really didn’t want to. Other reason could be that my parents and almost all my friends did it and I wanted to be like them, I don’t know. Whatever the reason was I keep doing it, less than at the beginning, and combined with my knee injury, basketball is a really torture for me rather than be an escape for fun and leisure in these stressful days of University.
When I watch television, most of time I watch ESPN; because I like NBA very much. Sometimes, I stare at Kobe Bryant’s plays and I wonder if he had, at some point of his life, been injured like me. Obviously, he wouldn’t have to bother about paying millionaire hospital bills, and spend money on physical therapists. A whole team would have been in charge of his recovery. Well, that’s not my case. The only team I had backing me up when I suffered my injury, was my family and my girlfriend. And my parents were the ones in charge of paying the doctor’s bill. In fact, mom and dad weren’t so happy when I slipped and wounded my knee, on the contrary they argued with me for not followed the coach orders. Now it is funny, but back then it wasn’t. Well it’s not funny today either, I still feel pain sometimes and I cannot play as I did when I was at High School but I try not to be depressed about that.
I can imagine what are you thinking now, “Oh, poor guy, he’s not able to play basketball anymore” Well no, actually I’ve kept playing, with the only difference that I do not play as often as I did 5 or 6 years ago. I tried to be active as much as my time allows me. I play once a week, on weekends, but I’ve really missed those marathons of basketball I used to play with my friends at High School, from 9 A.M. until 1 P.M., only a 1 hour break for lunch and from 2 P.M. to 6 P.M. those were our weekends, just sports. There wasn’t space for us in parties; we were sleeping at 9 P.M. after a Saturday full of basketball. Those were our days, we seized them, and those days, the golden basketball days, won’t come back. A life time experience, I’m glad that it was mine.
Ignacio Toledo Bueno
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment