Recently, my wonderful wife and I have been reminiscing about the joy of trying to teach teenagers to read the instructions that accompany new things. Some things are complicated to operate, and kids tend to ignore the instructions and just begin messing with the ‘thing’ until they either break it, or it works. With Ipads and the like, it’s not a problem. These things work intuitively. With other things, like watches, they are not intuitive, but more like a Rubic’s Cube that tells time. My bride has always been somewhat more frustrated than me with these things, so I reminded her how I learned to read the instructions.
When I was 50 years old, I helped coach Catfish’s soccer team, The Storm. The Storm was made up of about fifteen, ten year old boys who had an abundance of energy and enthusiasm and an utter absence of game sense and skill. As boys will do, they played hard, and had a hell of a good time. Slowly, they began to understand the game of soccer, and build the teamwork and skills necessary to play the game.
As the season progressed, certain kids started to emerge with distinct skill sets. One kid, we called him Bigfoot, was an amazing athlete. He began to mature into an outstanding soccer player and team leader. The two smallest kids on the team were the back defenders. We called them the ‘Hornets’ because they just swarmed the ball. They became known as the best back defenders in the league. We were lucky in that we had two goal keepers, and a set of hispanic kids who were the finest forwards in the league. The Storm became an awesome team. The other coaches and I often ran with them as the scrimmaged and acted as opposing players. It was an amazing experience running with 10 year old boys as they passed the ball around and behind wheezing, sweating middle-aged men.
One day at practice, we were scrimmaging, and the kids were really doing well. They burned one coach after another with quick passes, and juke moves. As the oldest coach, and the fattest, and the only one who had never played soccer, the little rats came to me frequently because I was the easiest to burn. Even at 50, competitive juices still flow. A little rat bastard with the ball broke toward me. I could see he thought he was going to put on over on me. I knew what he was gonna do. He was gonna toe the ball, spin it, jump over it and then whack it with his other foot and pass it to another little bastard with was trailing him. “Not this time”, I thought. He came closer. I broke down like a linebacker meeting Barry Sanders would. Head up, feet spread apart, knees bent, weight over the balls of my feet, arms spread wide. He came even closer, keeping the ball close to his feet, looking me in the eye. “I’ve got you you little bastard!”, I thought.
I was wrong. A hint of a head fake had me lurching to the left as Speedy Gonzolas burnt me to the right. I spun around and drove off my right leg to try to recover. I heard what sounded like a gun shot, and suddenly blinding pain ignited in my right knee. I hit the ground, clutching my knee. I did my best to refrain from cussing, and for the most part was successful. The whole team gathered around and stood silently as I rolled in the dust. Finally Bigfoot spoke, “I think he’s having a heart attack.”
What does this have to do with reading instructions, you must be thinking. I’m getting there. Give me a minute.
I blew my ACL, tore my meniscus, and broke my tibia…brain bending, mind numbing, soul searing pain. Pain that you don’t forget. Not knowing the tibia was split for a week was unfortunate because if you don’t know your leg is broken, you might be temped to just suck it up and carry your 14 year old Labrador Retriever (Buckwheat) who has become deathly ill out to the car to take him to the Vet where you find out that you have to put Buckwheat down. Yeah. Carrying a 95 lbs dog out to the car on a wiggly, broken leg is painful. Putting the dog down is worse.
So, I had to have my ACL rebuilt. They did this ‘orthoscopically’. The big advantage to this is that they only have to make three little holes, and one incision to accomplish the reconstruction. It is an amazing procedure. They take the center 1/3 of your petalar tendon, and use it to create a new ACL. The anesthesiologist knocks you out. The OrthoMagician does his stuff, and voila, a new knee.
The fog of anesthesia lifts slowly. I woke expecting the worst, but hey….no pain. My knee is in a huge brace, and wrapped up in bandages. The doc is explaining things to me, but I’m not listening much. I still have the foggy brain, but Landi is listening to every word. So we go home, and with crutches and Landi’s assistance, I make it up the stairs to our bedroom, and go to bed. I wondered how hard it was going to be to get down the stairs to the spare bedroom tomorrow morning so I could use the passive motion device which would bend my knee 5 degrees for the prescribed 6 hours.
I awoke to a new hell. The pain medication from surgery had worn off and it felt like acid tripping gophers had eaten away my kneecap. Remember the center 1/3 of the petelar tendon, well, that sucker hurts. Sunlight from the skylight falling on my knee burned like fire. Landi, my angle of mercy, appeared with percocets, and insisted that I come down stairs and begin the passive motion therapy.
Reluctantly, I locked the hinges on each side of my knee brace. This was to pervent my knee from moving, which the doctor had said would be incredibly painful for a time, while I used my crutches to get down the stairs. I swung my leg off the bed to begin getting out of bed, and the cutting pain from the petalar tendon took my breath away. I asked Landi for another percocet because obviously the last one was not working. She called me a ‘wimp’, and said “Just get up and go down the stairs. The doctor said you have to.” Slowly, and with incredibly blinding pain, I managed to get up and support myself on my good leg, and the crutches while my repaired leg dangled. Merely touching the floor with a toe made my stomach queazy. The pain was so strong and crippling that I was light headed as I approached the stairs. Each step down the stairs was a study in focused determination not to pass out because I knew for sure I did not want to fall down the stairs. Finally, after an eternity, I made it to the guest bed room where the passive motion device was located.
The bed in the guest room was a tall, brass bed with the passive motion device set up on it. I had to sit on the bed, swing my leg up on the bed, then position my leg in the passive motion device. I attempted to lift my leg, but the pain was searing. Landi commented that ‘You don’t look good.’, and offered to help. Just her touching my leg took my breath away. Finally after 10 minutes of trying to find a way to lift my leg up onto the bed, I had to just grit my teeth. Landi lifted my leg by my big toe and raised it on to the bed. I almost fainted, but we got it done. I was sweating, but I only had to get my leg into the passive motion device and then I would be done. I took a deep breath, and worked my leg into the device and secured the velcro straps that locked my leg in the device. I unlocked the joints on the knee brace so the knee would be able to bend.
Again, you must be wondering, so what’s up with reading the instructions. You’re thinking something terrible is going to happen with the passive motion device. Yeah, it was painful, but it worked like it was supposed to….once I unlocked the hinges.
If I had read the instructions on the knee brace, I would have known the ‘lock’ position from the ‘unlocked’ position. What I thought was ‘locked’ was actually “unlocked”. My whole painful and torturous journey from upstairs to the guest bedroom bed had been made with the brace in the unlocked position. The entire way my newly repaired knee had been freely flopping around.
The other set of instructions that you should read is the ones that come with the percocets. Percocets stop all movement through your digestive tract. Things set up. They get very solid. Suffice it to say that, with the assistance of vast amounts of Milk of Magnesia, 4 days after surgery, I gave birth to a piece of firewood.
That is how I learned to read the instructions. I always read directions now. Sometimes I read them twice.
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Ah heck. I finally signed up for the newsletter. Your stories always make me feel better, even when I “feel your pain” as I did with your knee story. Keep writing, Bill!