Monday, April 29, 2013

Backstory 6: Freshman Year, Part 1

Earlier today I had an appointment to get the leg x-rayed once more. After going through the motions a few times, I knew what to do. For the frontal view of the frame, the device needed stabilization with sandbags. For the side view, the frame could be counted on to stabilize itself. And, through the mix of my knowing how to position a Taylor Spatial Frame for x-rays and the nurse being pretty relaxed, allowing me to keep on my jacket and one shoe, it was a fairly easy ordeal.

Dr. Sundberg was sent the x-rays and, long story short, I was approved to have the frame removed about three and a half days from now. Apparently the osteotomy is not fully healed, but if the doctor says the frame can come off, well, I'd imagine the frame can come off. I had been planning on posting pictures, but never actually managed to get my hands on the x-rays. I'll need to work on that particular objective at some point.

The end was scheduled a few weeks ago, but was actually confirmed today. So…that's exciting?

But, for now, I have a blog which needs to make some progress…

FRESHMAN YEAR, PART ONE

For a number of disparate and ultimately inconsequential reasons, I decided I wanted to try to run cross country my freshman year of high school. There was the part of me that had always been deeply intimidated and therefore in awe of the idea of running miles at a time. There was the part of me that wanted to capitalize on my success running the mile in less than ten minutes. There was the part of me which decided that some of the people on the team who I knew would be worth getting to know better. There was the part of me that tried to listen to people who said I'd probably be best at long distance (compared to, say, sprinting). There was the part of me that knew a younger brother was also running.

I managed to join the email list and, during the summer, go for a run exactly once. Despite the mile, I was not exactly in shape.

All those concerns became rather secondary when there was another surgery, I believe to remove a growth on the femur, do something with a shoulder and I can swear something else. As before, the procedure itself was fairly straightforward and I remember pretty much none of it.

There are, however, two separate pieces of the overall experience which I remember quite clearly. The first is the day before the surgery. The procedure was scheduled for Thursday, July 16, 2009. July 15 was opening day for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Over the eight movies in the series, I saw seven in theaters and the final three on the day they opened. Half-Blood Prince was the one which started the trend. My mother was interested in seeing the thing and decided to buy tickets. The only showtime which wasn't sold out before the surgery was 11:30 PM. So, we went to a nearly sold-out Harry Potter at 11:30 PM. I was technically only allowed to eat popcorn for the first half hour of movie so I could be ready for anesthesia the following day. I think we got home at something like two in the morning. The roads were completely empty. Since I was having surgery the following day, my mother figured it didn't really matter what time I got to bed.

The other memory from that surgery comes later. I was recovering and, seeing as a large growth had just been removed from the femur, my motion was deeply restricted. In short, I was in a wheelchair. Some of the brothers had started doing summer swimming and were at the final meet for their recreational swim league. Since I was confined to my chair, I spent the day at home with my youngest brother, who spent the entire day playing the Wii.

I spent my entire day wishing I could turn off the Wii but being thoroughly unable to do anything about it—the one leg was propped up in the chair, my shoulder was still recovering and I was stuck. For quite literally hours, I sat in my wheelchair and watched as my younger brother played video games, bored out of my mind and wondering just what, exactly, I had done to deserve this.

Eventually, my parents came home and I was saved.

Some time after that, I got better. I was able to walk by the time school started and things passed fairly uneventfully until December, when we moved to Minnesota, leaving Virginia once the roads cleared up after a massive storm dumped more than two feet onto the roads around Charlottesville the day we planned to leave.

At my school in Virginia, I never had any intention of fulfilling the athletic requirements, which were rather stringent—two seasons, I believe, freshman and sophomore year, followed by another season each junior and senior year. I could very easily obtain medical excuses from Dr. Abel and, to tell the truth, there was a sort of cruel logic in my lack of participation. Physical activity, as I'd discover later, has a tendency of aggravating my legs and, as I learned a bit into the Minnesota move, there was the issue of the right leg not being as straight as it perhaps could have been. Also, sports were hard.

My half-crazed impulse to run cross country had been dashed rather magnificently by the most recent surgery. And yet, less than a year post-op (though all thoughts of the procedure had left my mind), I made the rash decision to go out for track. The new school required a season of athletic participation each freshman and sophomore year.

That sounded doable to me.

To be fair, track was not my first attempt at athletic participation. Attempt number one was a short-lived stint on the fencing team. Fencing, I discovered, is an activity much more fun in concept than it is in practice. There is only so much pleasure one can derive from squatting and swatting others with a sword. As a sport, fencing is nothing like the grand swordfights against skeletons or six-fingered men one sees in the movies.

So I did that for a few months. My ultimate goal was still to lower the mile time even more—perhaps to less than eight minutes.

My first day of track did not go well. I had failed to get my athletic forms signed. Since the fencing team was not the best organized and didn't give a hoot either way, I'd been allowed to attend practice and compete for the school without getting things signed. Since track was better organized and actually listened to the mandates of the athletic office, I got to spend my first day of practice pacing outside, watching everybody else be forced to run. Because I was a bit of an idiot and failed to think things through properly, I thought that the practice seemed doable.

The next day, my forms were signed and, on an impulse, I decided to join the throwers. It sounded interesting and, despite all the romantic and idealistic connotations I found in running, running still scared me deeply.

And, to summarize, that is why I became a thrower.

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