On Wednesday night during TKD practice, I planted my leg to-do a kick and my left…
On Wednesday night during TKD practice, I planted my leg to-do a kick and my left knee gave out. There was lots of pain and I spent all day yesterday seeing doctors and getting pictures taken. Before seeing the MRI pictures, my doctor said it was either going to be bad (just MCL tear) or really bad (MCL + other stuff). Well, she confirmed this morning that I tore the MCL and ACL both, I think that counts as really, really bad.
I'm bummed at many levels. This is going to take months and months to recover from and it will make doing every day things a pain in the butt for a while. Just getting up and down the stairs takes quite an effort. I've already accepted some surgery will be needed to glue me back together and there is always lots of fun with surgeries. I think the icing on the cake is finding out all of this on my birthday, it kind of ruined the fun weekend we had planned.
The worst part of all this is also probably the one that will surprise people, it surprises me. This is going to keep me out of TKD for probably a year or so, depending on how the surgery goes. I'm not a sports person, I'm more anti-sports actually and I have never liked working out. If you asked me six months ago if I thought I'd like TKD, I would have laughed at you. The only reason I even tried it is because Isaac really wanted both Rosie and I to go with him to the family classes. I finally agreed to go one day a week, which quickly became two and then three and lately was closer to four with a clear path to five. I was even going on Saturday to the special 'stop being a fat ass' class and enjoying it.
I think the reason that TKD has clicked with me has to-do with how engaging it is, for both your head and body. Unlike other forms of exercise I'd tried, you don't 'check out' when doing it, instead it seems like your continually in problem solving mode. I've also had a slow, but steady improvement, which always helps with the motivation. There are so many 'skills' you have to learn, something which you probably never really fully accomplish, but I've started to see common threads which run through them. I'm only really beginning to grok some of this stuff.
The other big part of was how lucky we got when picking picking Mercer Island Martial Arts, they have what seems to be a unique Do Jang. Part of it is how they really focus on the kids and do such an incredible job with them. This was super important for us, because Isaac initiated this whole thing and he is really comfortable there. But for me, they managed to provide the camaraderie aspects of a team sport, without it being a team sport. It very much does feel like a family there and that makes it more fun.
I now need to get myself out of the comfortable hole I created at home, I got an appointment with the orthopedic doctor in an hour. I'm sure he will have lots of good news for me. :-)
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