“Hello, my name is Shawn and I have a knee injury.”
It’s not a perfect comparison—there are no group meetings or sponsors—but I have been in rehab (i.e., physical therapy) for about two months and frequently feel the urge to relapse while watching my soccer team play. Then I bend my knee to a certain degree or twist my leg around and that urge goes away.
At least it did until last week. Before a game on Wednesday, I decided to help the keeper warm up by taking some shots on net. I felt okay after the first few times, so I started kicking the ball harder. Not as hard as possible, mind you—I thought keeping the ball in reach of the keeper was a little more important than powerfully sending it soaring up into the roof.
That five minutes or so felt great, but as the game progressed while I stood on the sideline, my knee started to let me know it was displeased. Very displeased. Ooh yeah, that was definitely a relapse. When I got home, I was having trouble walking up and down stairs again.
Thankfully, physical therapy has gone well enough that I recovered quickly and I’m doing all right. I went to the local YMCA today and rode on an exercise bike for about 20 minutes. I didn’t push myself really hard because I didn’t want to rupture anything, but after a semester of circuit training twice a week and then two months of not being able to work hard enough to break a sweat, those 20 minutes felt pretty good. As for my limping down the stairs towards the locker room afterward… I think it’s fair to say I haven’t graduated from KIA just yet.
