I woke up without my alarm this morning. The power outage from the night before made for a quiet start to the day at Perkins Sq. Perhaps all of the door slammers and morning shouters overslpet.
I awoke at 7 AM to my impossibly stiff left leg, frozen in place over the pillows used to elevate my swollen knee. The swelling is full on now. By the early light of day, the reality of this injury came crashing down. I block the sight of this reality with a pillow over my face and pound the palms of my hands into my muffled brow. I replay that fateful step that broke me. My mind, refreshed from sleep, cleared of the shock, exhaustion and ibuprofren gladly replays the feeling of my leg bending unaturally I relive the snap/sproing of once taught ligaments and tendons giving way. I feel nautious.
I reset my alarm clock, cheerily flashing it's best guess at the time, and opt for another hour of sleep. I am unready to face this day.
I awake another hour into the day and begin to reconstruct myself under this new edict. The cocksure attitude I held last night on the fields and at Volker's vanishes with the undeniable stiffness and swelling that invaded my knee last night. Unable or just unwilling to stretch, the injury feels compounded by my sore, tight, post tournament muscles.
My room reflects my state of mind. Cleats and jerseys are scattered about the floor like guilty accomplices laid to waste. An immobilization brace snuggles under the covers of my bed and an ace bandage intertwines with the sheets leading the way to a watery ice pack. I begin to reconstruct myself. A shower is necessary, but not before attending to the call of nature. These are the tidbits of information you want on your discharge sheet. The basic "How do I deal with the simple process of life with a broken part of me?" I decide to slide and squat in a fashion that is anything but graceful until I can catch myself with aid of the nearby sink and lower seat to seat. My left leg splays out stiffly across the bathroom floor. So far so good.
The shower is the next task. Fortunately there are ample handholds and I manage to remove the sunscreen and grime that covers my limbs. I tenderly scrub both knees and begin to feel a little more human. After my shower, I shave and examine the weary soul staring back at me. I grit my teeth and shift my weight. I need to know what still works down there. I feel the stubborness welling up inside. I can beat this. I can overcome. I better take it slow.
I dress for the day and don my immobilizer. The walk to the T-stop takes 12-15 minutes on a good day. I expect I will double this time today.
Today is the day I finally blew out my knee playing Ultimate.
Another hot and humid weekend for Ultimate at Ft. Devens (now known simply as Devens. For those of who don't play Ultimate out this way, Devens is the site of most every major tournament hosted out of the Boston area.
Following last summer's stern warning from Dawn D. about the toxic waste that was dumped in the lakes/ponds near there, I did a little research before deciding if the urge to cool off hits this weekend will outweigh growing gills as a result.
It turns out that after some poor planning on the part of the Army and Natick Laboratories, Ft. Devens qualified as a SuperFund site once it was determined that the ground water tables were being contaminated by any number of lovely inorganic chemical substances.
Toby Mandel of Colgate offers a succint history of the environmental issues at Ft. Devens.
The EPA's rosy description of events.
Finally, I found the CDC's PUBLIC HEALTH ASSESSMENT for Ft. Devens, particularly the ol' swimmin' holes. Their outlook is a reassuring, swim at your own risk.
SUMMARYFort Devens Sudbury Training Annex (STA) is classified as ATSDR's category of no apparent public health hazard. Few exposures have been identified, and those do not exceed health comparison values. However, a few STA study areas are classified as indeterminate public health hazards because limited groundwater data are available.
How do you recoup your losses from cleaning up a toxic waste site? Of course you develop the area as a community for families.
Suffice to say, I will probably still go swimming.
In composing a message to my friend Dana, I realized I actually had a blog entry in the making. What with Taus raising the blogging bar, I'm scouring my primary source of literary output. Since there are only so many bathroom walls, email is a secondary substitute.
Two and a half hours of sleep makes for an interesting day. Stumbling headlong into the day, the rain provided a refreshing shower on the way to my errantly parked car (no ticket). I got to
thank Jack Hammer in person, for waking me 15 minutes before the alarm. His dump truck was parked a gracious six inches from my car. Coherency a mere idea, I was home long enough to
forget why I was there. After a few mindless swipes at clothing and food stuffs (and a few corrective activities following misapplication of said) I made it to one of the more surreal days of work I've had. Time passed quickly but I don't think I blinked the entire day. I'm pretty sure I was investigating the time space continuum from may desk in Chinatown. Oh, and free advice, don't walk past the live poultry store when the door is open and you are trying to decide if beer from Wisconsin you drank hours before counts as an early breakfast.
I managed to find myself at practice in time to sprint, scrimmage, and get rained on some more. My D game relied on interference in the form of hurling myself at the knees of whomever I was guarding. That was mostly Volker, as he too had the look of a Tuesday night regular. Volker and I agreed we are silly, far from salubrious, and late for the Jazz Fest concert in South Boston. After an enjoyable, but non-energizing performance from MMW and Jon Scofield it was obviously time for late night Chinese food. Adventures with Volker typically result in strange discoveries and the salted squid was no exception.
By the time I returned to JP, I had a fulfilling two minutes to reflect on my day, contemplate my toothbrush and collapse mostly in my bed. Today is moving along nicely and I am out to play a game with JPHoF.
More to come. ..