injured reserved

When an athlete goes down to injury it is commonly referred to as injured reserve. The athlete in question can be placed there for any amount of time, but the plan is always that he/she will be back out playing just as soon as they are well enough to do so. Some injuries are more serious than others and require more healing and some injuries tend to be recurring. One wonders how many times a knee has to go out before questioning your line of work.

In any case of injury, the athlete is pulled away from the day to day training, discipline and schedule they had been apart of prior. To me, this seems the most disconcerting. I imagine the routine, the daily workouts and the collective effort and mostly, the psychological stresses involved in maintaining a players form. If you were a train and the engine stopped working you could coast for a very long time, provided you didn’t apply the brakes. Your performance would be greatly hindered obviously, but you would still be moving. We could simply call that analogy, age. But when you’ve been seriously injured and can no longer compete and/or function in your sport or line of work, you come to a complete stop. Instantly. No brakes, no coasting, no runaway truck ramp, nothing.

Plain and simple, injuries really stink. Not only is there some level of pain involved, regardless of any medications, but if you were humming along and you were actually enjoying whatever it was you were doing, forget that. I am convinced that joy exits the body when pain enters it. The two pass each other in the hall and pain just points and laughs. It’s not pretty.

Adding insult to injury is attempting to better your mood during a season of injury. It’s like trying to bowl with a 40 pound ball with one finger….and that one finger is your thumb. I suppose it’s possible, provided you have really strong thumbs, but it won’t be easy, it’s probably going to hurt and there’s a chance you are going to look a little silly.

It has been determined that I do not handle injuries well. In fact, I become quite the grump. I have been fortunate in that I am rarely injured, but when it happens it’s usually a real doozy. I am hopeful that I will not be out of the proverbial game for long but as it stands right now, I at least owe my wife a get well card, maybe even some flowers.

Beyond the interruption, the pain and the inconvenience however, is this lingering notion that maybe I’m supposed to see or hear something else, now that I’m not moving so fast. That idea seems plausible, so I’m keeping my ear to the ground. Of course, part of the reason my ear is down there is because I’ve had trouble walking. Fortunately, I have strong thumbs.