I Can't Believe This Happened

A true story by JT

Orchard Park, NY 3/23/2006
I look forward to Thursday night hockey every week. We have a good team and a fun team to play with. Our Tools (that's our team name) team has roughly been together for over ten years. Each week, with best friend and drinking buddy Tim, we make our journey down to Orchard Park to play in a very competitive floor hockey league. We've made it 4 times to the championship game over the years and have come out a loser all four times (ala Buffalo Bills) all by one goal losses, two in overtime. We won our first game 19-4 and this year we added a few players that was going to get us to that championship game this season. I started out the season with 4 goals and two assists in that first game and I was feeling really good about the season. Starting our second game I felt really good too, I had a groin pull the previous week and it was starting to feel much bettter. Due to a few players showing up late I started back on defense with Tim (we're known to the owner of the league as the "Bash Brothers", how nice) and the first few plays I had to make went smooth. We were playing last year's undefeated champion, I disrupted two rushes and cleard the puck. Then ,the third minute into the game the ball came rolling back to me and with no one around me I was ready to make a center rush and create a play. I took one step and BOOM! (that's what it sounded like inside my head) it felt like someone slashed me from behind. I went down like an overweight white guy playing hockey with younger kids. Not knowing what happened at first and the ball laying in front of me and swiped at it with my stick to clear it up to our centerman. No need ... whistle blows and everyone gathers around. "What happened Jeff, your knee give out"?, says Steve the ref. That's usually what happens, my knee will turn and I'll go down. "Nope", I replied. I knew right away what it was. Nick on the other team said he heard a pop. So after 30 seconds, I gathered myself and two of my dependable teammates carried me off to our bench were I had to watch the rest of the game. Rats!!! We're playing the best team in the league with only one sub now. We lost the game 5-8 and I would have made a difference. I told our team that they had played hard and had a good game and then some of the guys from the other team came over to the our bench after the ceramonial handshake and said good luck to me.

Now the hard part, going home and telling Sandra what happened. I've got to lie, it's my only chance. A pack of wild dingos... no.





Some tree huggin' hippy liberal was demonstrating... no.
Nahhhh, no lies.







Next morning an appointment was made for me by my referring doctor to go see Dr. Rycyna. So being in good spirits I made my way (with Mr Fixit as my chaffeur) over to the new Sheridan Medical Center to get some x-rays to confirm the bad news. We arrived safely at the center with only a few complaints and driving suggestions by me from the passenger side. After the good Dr. touched my leg for .2 seconds (and referring to a digital image X-Ray) he determined that it was torn and scheduled surgery for 2PM that same day.















On to the surgery:
Being the man that I am I asked only for a bullet to bite down on. Not really, but the local that I did request was not nearly strong enough to block out the pain that was coming from the back of my leg. Stitch, stitch, staple, staple and he's done. The Dr. and nurses were very nice and did their best to divert my attention. At one point I asked the Dr. if he had the whole hand in there. That's a lil' "Fletch" joke. Moon River.

Now I'm home with my family that is more than willing to take care of me. Emma made me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich yesterday and has made me tea and corn for breakfast six times this morning.

I'll need someone to clip my toenails iin a few weeks... Sandra refuses to do it.