The Thing About Knees, Part 2: "Yea, That Starts To Happen"

1 of my favorite Louis CK bits of all time is when he talks about going to see his doctor because of ankle pain as a 40 year old. Looking for some type of remedy, the doctor offers Louis no real fixes, and instead just points out that his ankle is just “worn out” and “s***ty” now.

This is pretty much the viewpoint I’ve adopted for my own body recently as well. In the infancy of this blog, I think a quarter of all my posts were injury-related. Now, I’m at the point that I’m just tired of talking about it. This is partially because it seems like a new ache or pain is popping up all the time, and partially because (like Louis’ doctor) I’m not going to do anything about it anyway.

On Sunday, I re-tweaked my left knee playing 1-on-1 with Krissy. The play where it happened was innocent enough: I took 1 dribble to my right, and planted for a pull-up jumper. There was no contact, and this wasn’t some violent looking, Derrick Rose-esque jump-stop either…it was a pretty routine play for me honestly, and I was even wearing my knee brace at the time, a remnant of the last time I had a “minor” knee injury a month or so ago.

The reality though is that there’s a lot of wear and tear there, and it’s not like injuries to different parts of the knee are mutually exclusive from 1 another. A partial meniscus tear, an MCL sprain, an ACL sprain (that last 1 was only self-diagnosed, but it’s my best guess)…they all add up, and I’m no doctor, but I always believe that an injury to 1 area causes your body to naturally overcompensate somewhere else (which can lead to another injury and so on).

While the area where it hurts this time is unfamiliar to me from my previous injuries, it doesn’t seem to be major. While still not pain-free and somewhat unstable feeling today, it feels better than it did yesterday. Using my ol’ injury criteria (if I was on a team and had a game, could I strap a brace on it, take some Advil, and go out there and play if I had to?), I think I would pass. Still, with every passing tweak, I always wonder how many more jumps, plants, and cuts this knee has in it.

This brings me back to my original point…I always joke with Krissy that if and when she gets pregnant, I am going to take a break from everything, go to the doctor, and get my knee and shoulder cleaned out. But short of having some catastrophic D-Rose/Baron Davis injury, I doubt I will actually go through with it. The fact is that I’m 27, and (as the blog title goes) nothing more than a “B-Court All-Star” at this point. I fully expect to be working out and playing sports well into an advanced age, but as a weekend warrior type I can’t see myself going under the knife unless absolutely necessary.

I'll have what he's having.

So for now, I think I will just have to live with having a s***ty incurable knee and trying to do my best to maintain its current state. If that means saying, “I’ll take 1 of everything,” when going through the McDavid catalog (or as I like to call it, the “Dwyane Wade special”), I guess that’s what I’ll do. The other alternative (taking it easy) never sounds all that fun to me anyway.