Falling Apart

I expect that any day now parts of my body are just going to start falling off. That's where the trend is heading, anyway.

After a three week hiatus due to patellar tendonitis, last night at a tennis workout I stepped on a stray ball and twisted my ankle. Again. For the 27th time.

This the same ankle that I twisted during a match last April. It took an unusually long time to heal and, in fact, was still in the habit of hurting after I played, although it didn't seem to limit my mobility. (I did win my league this summer, after all.) The same ankle that I've twisted about 3-4 times over the past four years since I took up tennis.

This is the same ankle that I used to twist all the time playing basketball throughout my 20's. I would routinely come down on the side of my foot when I jumped. It got so bad that I stopped playing basketball altogether and took up tennis.

This is the same ankle that I originally sprained 22 years ago during a wrestling match in high school.

I've been through the drill. I'm well acquainted with this particular brand of ankle pain. But I worry that this time I've really fucked it up. That the accumulative damage of spraining this ankle over and over again over the years will someday prevent me from running at all. When I visited the sports medicine clinic about my knee a few weeks ago, I told the guy about my ankle, and he suggested that the recurring injury might have made it arthritic. Arthritis? But I'm only 38!

It hurts more now than it usually does. I can hardly walk and have to limp around the library. I have to go to the doctor today to get it checked out. All kinds of grisly scenarios go through my mind. Maybe it's broken. Maybe I'll need surgery. Maybe a part of the bone chipped off and is traveling through my bloodstream to my heart, where it will kill me. I've heard stories.

I do want to make it known that, although I stepped on a stray ball, twisted my ankle, and fell on my ass like an idiot, I did win the point. Just like last year when I broke my clavicle.

Who knows how long this new injury will set me back. I just want to play tennis, but tennis keeps hurting me. It's true what they say: we hurt (and get hurt by) the ones that we love the most.