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Monday
Sep132010

A postscript to my 9/11 story

In the course of trying to 'go back to normal', in February 2002 I went skiing at Camelback out in Pennsylvania. The crappy weather (and by crappy I mean crappy skiing weather, too warm for snow) led to them using a lot of fake snow, and then a sudden cold snap led to icy conditions, which they layered over with more fake snow.

Why is this important? Bear with me.

In the course of the morning my left ski wound up getting caught as I came up on a right turn; I couldn't get the ski to lift off the snow/ice which was important considering I would've hit a tree otherwise. As my body pulled to the right, my left leg kept veering to the left, until I finally yanked and heard a loud POP.

My leg wasn't very stable after that, but I kept skiing for the rest of the afternoon, until the leg finally gave out on me around three in the afternoon....roughly four and a half hours I first had the fall.

After a few days of icing it down at home didn't help, and after having the leg give out a few times in the street, I went to see a doctor. An orthopaedic doctor, as per my cousin, the physician's assistant. The diagnosis: Torn left anterior cruciate ligament. With my consent, surgery was scheduled for April 18th, to be followed a week later by physical therapy.

The surgery went off without a hitch, and I started rehabbing shortly thereafter. In the course of the rehab, Matt, the guy assigned with the task of rebuilding me better, stronger than I was before would put me on a stationary bike for fifteen minutes next to another guy as a warmup, who he told me was rehabbing from the same thing.

While I was getting ready to get on the bike one day I noticed the guy's knee. Whereas I had a scar running horizontal down my kneecap (where they'd cut to remove the middle third of my patella tendon to become my new ACL), this guy had a cross-shaped scar on his knee, and another long scar running horizontally down each side of them. Being the personable guy I am, I started making small talk with the guy, lameting our situations. The guy would smile, not say much of anything, and keep on looking ahead.

"Matt," I asked my therapist while he was torturing me by forcing me to stand on a balance board, "that guy couldn't have had the same surgery, his knee looks like Frankenstein's face. What kind of quack did his surgery?"

Matt looked around before answering. "It's a long story, I don't know all the details, but he tore a bunch of ligaments in his knee getting out of the World Trade Center on September 11th. Julie's his therapist, she may know more."

During the electrolic stimulation part of therapy, I asked Julie about the guy. Turned out she didn't know more than Matt.

"He doesn't talk about it. Doesn't talk about anything really. I know there was some severe damage, he tore the ACL, MCL, his meniscus, he needed a couple of surgeries but he won't say how it happened."

The guy interested me, but I was focused on my own situation. I was determined to rehab myself faster than the expectations were, and had set a target for myself to start running three months after surgery. To that end, I was in rehab three days a week, and spent three other days during the week at the gym,  walking on the treadmill and doing some extra work on the leg press to build up strength.

Some time in late June, when Matt asked me to leg press 30 lbs, I laughed and jacked it up to 50. Before Matt could stop me, I started pressing it without much effort, stunning him to silence. After I finished I got to my feet and stood on my left leg for thirty seconds, something I couldn't do for more than five three weeks before.

I kept this going for almost another month, and I started playfully taunting Matt, who couldn't understand how I was progressing so fast. The guy on the bike, whose name I'd learned was Dave, would occasionally laugh when he heard me discussing my options with Matt.

"Hey Matt, you think I can leg press a hundred pounds tomorrow?"

"Matt, I bet I could do that circus juggling kick with you, wanna try?"

"Go get some bricks and build a wall, I want to try kicking through it"

All of it was self motivational, occasionally it was amusing.

On a Saturday at the end of July, without telling anyone, I drove myself to Marine Park in Brooklyn and ran the circular lap twice. Three months after surgery. When I went to rehab the following Monday, I told Matt about it while I was on the bike.

"Are you out of your mind? Do you know the damage you can do?"

"I had a knee brace on, I wasn't running that hard or fast, I just needed to know I could do it. Besides, I've been working outside of this place, you know." And with that, I outlined my diabolical scheme, the work I'd been doing in the gym, etc. Matt was stunned.

So was Dave.

"You're pretty crazy, huh?" Dave asked.

"I've been called worse," I told him. "But I don't want to hobble around for the rest of my life, I'd rather push myself as hard as possible to be better than I was before."

At the end of the session, Matt signed off my paperwork that my rehab work was complete.

"You son of a bitch, I doubt you'll need to but if you need to come back for anything let me know."

With that I went to the locker room to shower and change. As I was getting dressed Dave came in.

"I hope you don't mind my saying this," he said. "I really admire the way you worked in this place. Makes me think about how hard I'm working."

I said something about being motivated to just get my life back to where it was pre-injury.

"Good for you. My knee's pretty bad, I should feel like you do about going back to what I was but I don't know if I can. See, this all happened when I was escaping from Two World Trade Center."

"Wow, you got out? You're lucky."

"I don't know if I am. The elevator I was on going down had stopped working, they got the doors open between floors for us to get off it. As this woman was trying to climb out she fell into the shaft. I was able to get out of the shaft, I jumped to the ground and landed on my leg, then I ran to the emergency exits. I jumped down a few flights, and then I got outside and I saw people who'd jumped, and I saw other people looking up, and all the smoke, and I just started running. I ran all the way home, to the upper east side. Once I got home I got into bed and I didn't leave my apartment for a month and a half. By the time I went to have my knee looked at all this scar tissue had built up, I've had three surgeries to correct it."

I'd been sitting there the whole time, half-dressed, not knowing what to say. I could tell he hadn't told this story much, if at all, so I just kept my mouth shut and listened.

"Every time I sleep I see the woman in the elevator falling. I hear her screaming. I see the people's bodies smashed to pulp on the street, all the blood. I hear how lucky I am, and I haven't believed it."

"Well....when I first had my ACL tear diagnosed, I was given a choice: do surgery or don't do it. I was told if I planned on having any kind of active remainder of my life I should do the surgery, otherwise I'd be hobbled forever. Not that I wanna compare situations, but it's up to you what you do with the rest of your life now."

He laughed. "Yeah, I know. I just want to say thank you. I think maybe I need to work a little harder to rehab myself, seeing you work that hard, hearing what you did outside this place, it really does give me something to think about."

We shook hands, and I finished getting dressed while he showered.

Once I got outside the building I sat on a steampipe and started bawling my goddamned eyes out.

 

 

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