(the right knee, night of injury)
When I was lying on the ground in immense pain, I knew the severity of this injury was nothing like I have experienced before and the timing could not have been much worse either. It was 10PM on a Thursday night, and the next day Michelle (my girlfriend), was supposed to be arriving at Fiumicino Airport to spend her spring break in Rome with her boy. I Facebooked her as soon as I got home from the game and here are a few messages I sent to her that night to show you what was going through my head(never mind the grammatical errors or cursing):
"no czesc, i just got back from my game really early, we apparently won 5 1 but i left at halftime. in the first like 5 minutes of the game i did something to my knee and its bad, I'm going to the doctor tomorrow/or he's com in with me but i doubt I'm gonna be able to get outta bed to get to campus...or the airport. regardless of wht the diagnosis is, yur still gonna go on and have fun in rome and I'm gonna try to do as much as i can (great, i sounds like "hold on rose, never let go, ur gonna go on and have beautiful babies, and grow old....") butits not good and i don't wanna throw around words about wht it cud be or blah blah blah but i can't bend it and barely walk. and i still have 2 more months abroad and this ur spring break and then my spring break and i can't believe this fuckin shit. I'm gonna pop some painkillers now, shower, and elevate it for the rest of the night and probably elevate myself after i talk to the 2nd ra about wht the plan is for tomorrow cuz if i went to the hospital tonight they would just keep me there all night and tell me what i probably already know and nothing would get accomplished. so ill probably go tomorrow with a ra who speaks italian and well...i wasn't gonna tell u any of this and i tried holding it in but i wanna give u time now on the plane to actually plan most of ur time here with zoe and jade cuz I'm not gonna be able to accomplish everything with u guys, unless ur gonna walk slow enough so the kid on crutches cud keep up ja pierdole i can't even say i hate my life at this point cuz I'm spoiled in rome for 4 months and have this great gf but goddammit, this really sucks"
"idk i tore something in my knee, actually i kno i did"
"and right when this happened i knew it was bad and a llllllll this shit went thru my head, like holy fuck I'm in rome, i don't want surgery here, michelle comes tomorrow wtf am i gonna do i already booked most of spring break which is in a week and then another month here and i kno this i bad and it fuckin hurts and holy shit why do i play sports and why do i get hurt and this really can't get any worse, in timing i guess....but yea, all that in like a span of 60 seconds of me yelling in pain and punching the ground and holding my knee"
.....its ok, I know it a lot to take in. The cursing, the drug references, the part where I sound like a whiny little bitch, this might be as vulgar as my posts get.....
As you can see, I was not in the best of moods right from the start and I knew I really messed up this time. Going further, next Thursday, March 15th, was the beginning of my spring break and I already had everything booked with a few buddies (Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Krakow). Did I continue with my Euro-trip? Fuck yea I did. Still, the whole week leading up to that was tough. One day I had a whole itinerary set up to show Michelle and her friends the best things of Rome, and the next day I was bedridden for who knows how long. I still managed to spend some time with them and even had a few sleepovers throughout the week. Unfortunately, we were only able to spend most of our time together when the sun went down and bar hopping took place because it was much easier sitting at a table drinking beer, wine, and shots, then it was walking around during the day from one ruin to the next.
It took me a whole 4 trips to the hospital that week to finally find out what exactly was wrong (Friday = put a cast on; Monday = was supposed to meet with a doctor but only scheduled an MRI appointment for the next day; Tuesday = was supposed to meet with a doctor but only got my MRI; Wednesday = picked up my MRI results from the hospital and scheduled an appointment with an English speaking orthopedic surgeon).
Because of my limited availability that week due to my handicap conditions and the fact that her "best trip of my life" was hampered by my inability to walk and spend all my time with her, I had a small breakdown one of those days. I am not one to get all emotional and I definitely do not enjoy when suddenly the whole world feels bad for me. After taking some of my frustrations out on her and letting my negative feelings get the best of me, we somehow managed to get through it and moved on from there. Screw knee injuries, really. And thanks Michelle, for being understanding and still loving me even when I sounded like such a big pussy. It was just hard taking it all in. I felt like on one hand how can I complain? I am living in Rome for 4 months this is the best time of my life. Then on the other hand, I just did serious damage to my knee and I don't know where to go from here. I was in a mixed world of emotions but I managed to get through it.
After that week passed by, Michelle was returning to the states and I was setting out on a trip around Europe on crutches and a cast (Italian hospitals, enough said). It was a memorable one and since I already took the time to thank Michelle for dealing with me, I might as well send a huge THANK YOU to my friends James, John, and Tom who helped me get around on our insanely fun and at times stupid (inside jokes) Euro-trip.
(in Amsterdam, crutches on the side)
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