Sports Related Injury

*FAN SUBMISSION by Kraig Ehm of Laingsburg, MI. Follow him on Twitter @kraigehm.*

I was an athlete in high school. Well, I played sports.

I lettered in track as a miler pacer. I never actually competed in a race; I was used in practice to warm up our miler by running lickety-split for two laps. I normally pooped out just as the real track athlete hit his stride.

I lettered in football. I actually hold my school’s record for blocked punts returned for a touchdown in a game—1. Unfortunately, it was our own punt.

I lettered in basketball. Now this is a sport where I was a playa. I could shoot the rock from the outside, burying trey’s before they had even created a three point line.

Courtesy: Physical Therapy Specialist.com

“Radar” was the name—bombing from downtown was the game. Dunking was never an option at the time as I suffered from vertigo. Leaping several feet in the air caused me dizziness and the thought of landing while—okay, okay. I couldn’t jump.
At all.

In addition to being a record-setting athlete, I had the thrill of accruing various sports-related injuries. Below is a partial list:

• Staph infection.

The red tracer line traveled up my right leg causing me great difficulty in walking. After playing in a basketball game one night, my mom thought it best to go to the emergency room and have my foot checked out. A nurse came in my room and said:

“I am going to have to give you a shot.”

Rolling up my left sleeve, I asked, “Does it matter in which arm you give me the shot?”

It was a sincere and innocent question.

“The shot is not for your arm. Drop your pants, Mr. Ehm.”

The nurse drilled me in the hip with a needle long enough to knit an elephant a sweater with no trouble at all, if one would’ve had the time and the patience.

Florence Nightingale almost shot-put me over the opposite side of the bed.

The doctor finally came in and told me to stay off my feet for a couple of weeks. Didn’t the dude realize I had a game to play the next night?

My mom wasn’t in the room when I received the discharge instructions.

“Kraig, what did the doctor say?”

“He said to rest it some and elevate. He also said to wrap it tightly with ankle tape and take aspirin.”

“Oh. Okay.”

The next night a teammate wrapped my foot tighter than Tutankhamen, allowing me to lumber up and down the court.

• Arm contusion. 

I was a tight end in football and could catch anything and everything thrown my way. A lack of game-breaking speed or any speed for that matter was my albatross. All I
owned was first gear.

One game I reached out to haul in a touchdown pass at the exact time two defenders were converging in an effort to cause me great bodily harm.

They succeeded.

One defender hit the outside of my arm while his partner in crime hit the inside, pinning my appendage between two Riddell helmets. I’m still not sure how I hung on to the pass but I did.

While reclining in the end zone wondering why I ever decided to play football, I observed our trainer jogging out to check on my health and well being. He found my arm swelling due to the contusion. My bicep had never been so large before (or after) and it turned from a beautiful blue to black in two minutes flat.

• Amnesia

While playing basketball, someone on our team took an outside shot and I went charging in for the rebound. An idiot (yes, idiot) from the other squad jumped, grabbed the board and came down to the floor with his right leg extended. The three o’clock angle was perfect to hurt someone who, unaware of the joust-like appendage, might come barreling in the paint for the missed shot.

I was that someone.

I ran full-tilt into his locked leg with an unmentionable area that still despises me to this day. Refs giggled while checking on me. Two teammates dragged my carcass to the locker room.

I still cannot remember what the guy who impaled me looks like.

Amnesia.

• Auditory carbuncle

Back to the gridiron means back to the ground. But before I taste the turf (again), I will explain the cause of the discomfort.
God gave me blinkers for ears. Most people’s ears are in close proximity to the cranium, but not mine. From the front, it looks like I am simultaneously signaling left and right. It never really bothered me until this particular dirty, awful, rotten game.

One of the pieces of equipment a pigskin participant must wear is a helmet. The device is meant for safety and the prevention of serious head injuries.

But what about the dad gum ears? Hello? Bueller?

Helmets have ear holes that allow a player’s ears to breathe? I have no earthly idea why the inventor of the football helmet decided to cut two holes out of the sides of the contraption.

Anyway, before each game I had to “tuck” my ears into the helmet to make sure they did not stick out of the ear holes. Well, wouldn’t you know it, this one horrible game I forgot.

On the bus ride to the game, I was caught up in the euphoria of the contest and miserably failed a personal safety check.

“Shoulder pads?”

“Check.”

“Mouthpiece?”

“Check.”

“Cup?”

Tap-tap.

“Check.”

“Jersey?”

“Check.”

“Helmet?”

“Check.”

“Ear holes?”

Silence.

“Ear holes?”

More silence.

In the second half my number was called in the huddle.

“Strong-side right, roll right, tight end five and out.”

I lined up, executed my route to perfection, reached up, snagged the pass and was instantly confronted with an acute “auditory carbuncle” attack.

An on-the-prowl safety noticed I had recently received a perfectly tossed spiral and zeroed in on me at top speed.

“Wham!”

He tried separating me from the pigskin by hitting me helmet to ear hole!

My un-tucked, un-protected audio appendage was instantly pinned between two Riddell helmets.

While laying on the ground recalling a previous contest, appendage pinning and conversation of “why am I playing?,” my left ear started swelling.

“Ring!”

“Ring!”

“Ring”

“Is that you Ma?”

The refs were looking down at me and talking, but I couldn’t hear nary a word.

The trainer escorted me off the field (to cheers I can only assume) and I plopped down on the bench.

Fast forward a few decades, presidents, gray hairs and calories bringing us to my latest and not-so-greatest sports related injury.

• Umbilical Hernia 

I normally do not shoot hoops on “men’s” night. The biggest reason is that I am not interested in being hacked or taken out by someone who has an axe to grind about not making his high school team’s roster.

However, I decided to make an exception because I wanted to stretch out a little after having reffed three games the previous weekend.

In an effort to pick teams, a long line of Basketball Jones’ were bricking free throws, meaning twenty guys would be competing against the one sap who sunk his.

Then it was my turn. The former state free throw champion of Alaska lined it up, released and it almost swished. Yea me. I’m playing in the first game (I was only planning on playing one game because I had a game to ref the next night).

When the cease-fire finally took effect I looked over at my teammates—we were all short AND slow. Across the way, the other team sported athletic types (who invited them?) and a guy who appeared to be 6’12”. My tallest compadre was approximately eight inches shorter than Lurch.

Lurch had the ball at the top of the key and was looking to deal a dime. He whipped the ball in my direction and with cat-quick reflexes, I twisted to the right, extended my arm , deflected the pass to a teammate and down the court we sort of rolly
polleyed on a fast break. Eureka! It made no difference to me that we missed the ensuing layup. What was important was that I hadn’t lost my feel for the game.

Unfortunately, the game was over before it began. The biggest difference between the two teams besides athleticism and grace was the fact they made their shots.

I actually snared a rebound and put it in for my only points in the men’s night massacre.

As I slowly dragged myself off the court I felt a horrible pain in my stomach. By the time I reached the bench, my midsection was on fire as if someone had drilled me with a nail gun from two feet away.

I lifted my shirt, looked down, and noticed my belly button had unraveled. Totally.

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home to pick up a couple of cans of soup. Bending over to get in and out of the car was a serious chore and by the time I eventually made the three mile jaunt, the thought of sleeping in the garage was rather appealing.

It was a unique half-hour trip to E.R. My wife was behind the wheel and my EMT certified daughter was riding in the backseat. I never even had to call “shotgun.”

“I think all I did was maybe pull or strain an abdominal muscle.”

“No Dad, I think you have a hernia,” stated the one person in the vehicle whose medical opinion was based on study of the human body and not on an old episode of Doogie Howser, M.D.

The emergency room nurse was pleasant.

“How did you hurt yourself?”

While she took my vitals I explained the origins of my injury.

“I think it might just be a strained abdominal muscle. My daughter is an EMT and she thinks it might be a hernia?”

I threw the question at the end, not because I doubted my offspring, but because I preferred my diagnosis over hers.

“It could be an abdominal muscle. But I think your daughter’s right. It’s a hernia.”

The E.R. doctor looked familiar. Oh yea! Roughly ten years ago she treated my finger that had a sliver shoved way up under the nail. But that was the result of an eating related injury and not sports related, so that tale will have to wait.

“Does this hurt,” asked the doc as she leaned with all her weight on my defenseless belly button, while attempting to push it out my back.

What kind of belly button do you have? An in-y, out-y or back-y?

It does now.

“Yes.”

“On a scale of 1-10, what is your pain?”

“Two.”

Hey, my affected area was no longer hurting. It might not be as bad as I thought.

“Yes, you have a hernia. It’s actually called an “Umbilical Hernia.”

Umbilical Hernia?

You mean to tell me I get injured shooting hoops and I can’t even come down with a sports hernia? Instead, I am diagnosed with an infirmity that emits images of an infant with a suckie? How do I explain THAT to my fellow referees?

“Kraig, I heard you were in E.R. What happened?”

“Well, Jim. I was shooting hoops and in the process of stealing a pass I pulled my pacifier.”

I had no idea a belly button could be afflicted in this manner. The only adversity mine had faced before was an overabundance of lint.

The doc explained what happened in graphic detail. TMI! TMI! TMI! She also mentioned that I needed surgery, could not lift any heavy objects (No fritters from Cops and Doughnuts), and running was out of the question.

I was in shock wondering how a made free throw gave me a hernia.