It was difficult for everyone watching the NBA game last night between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Boston Celtics to see the devastating leg injury suffered by new Celtic, Gordon Hayward.
I winced and touched the screw that protrudes under my skin on my shin bone (tibia).
A multimillion dollar elite professional athlete, Hayward will be treated well and getting advice from the best in the business, doctors, physical therapists and trainers.
But it might be important as well for Gordon to talk to some folks who have been through it.
Gordon could seek out other athletes such as Joe Theismann, Sam Bowie, Paul George or Kevin Ware for insight into their devastating leg injuries.
Or , you could ask me for advice..
In fact I’ll offer it right now, no charge. And my experience, although gruesome had a positive effect on my game, and my life.
First off, I’m no elite athlete. I’m just a big fan of the game and started playing pick-up 35 years ago, hooping it everywhere from neighborhood playground ball, to the Y, to an occasional league here and there in Alabama, Florida and California.
So I divide my ‘career’ into two phases:
1) Before the break. 2) After the break.
But, first, let me tell you about the break.
I was in a church gymnasium in Leesburg, FL,in 1989. I was a reporter for the Orlando Sentinel. It was lunchtime basketball. We had folks from all strata of life, from lawyers to store clerks to truck drivers to folks you didn’t ask what they did.
I was an unsophisticated player with little coaching but had a good stroke and could run a bit at age 29.
So this one day, halfway into a game, a guy on the other team steals the ball and streaks for a fast break layup.
I turn on the jets in pursuit and leapt as high as I can, which frankly isn’t that high, but at 6’ and lanky I managed to bat the ball off the backboard from behind. It was a legal blocked shot because I hit the ball before it hit the backboard. When I landed on the indoor-outdoor carpet that covered the floor of the gym, my sneaker stuck like it hit a glue spill.. My leg bent but my shoe was intent on sticking the landing.
Whether it was torque, the angle, the hold of the carpeted floor, or simply a lack of vitamin D in my diet, there was no denying the loud sickening ‘crack’ as my leg bones snapped.
I went down but instinctually popped up and tried to walk. Everybody in the gym, including me, heard the crack, but in my confusion I thought I could just pop up and shake it off.
I suddenly realized that my left leg was wobbling and bending in the wrong places. When I tried to walk, I believe, the bone tore the skin.
I laid down.
First thing my adrenaline accelerated brain was telling me: Don’t look at my leg. Keep your head. As we had no doctors in the house, someone motioned the dentist over. Hell, he had a Dr. before his name.
I later learned the dentist knelt down, looked at the bone protruding from my leg and walked outside where he threw up in the bushes.
I stayed calm at the scene, telling folks to call my wife, Catherine, who was 7 months pregnant and caring for our 2-year-old. Tell her it’s a minor injury, I stressed, knowing that Catherine with a nursing degree will quickly figure out otherwise.
I told someone to call my boss and tell him I won’t be in for a while.
I was rushed by ambulance to surgery where they installed an external fixation device. It was made up of a bunch of steel rods (six or eight) half of them were screwed into the bone above the wound, half under the wound with cross beams to apply the pressure.
Like the reverse of some Medieval torture device which stretched your bones until they broke, this device pulled the bones together.
Diagnosis: compound fracture of the tibia – fibula , also called open fracture. That means the bone popped through the skin.
The first few weeks were torture. My leg really hurt. I couldn’t find a comfortable way to sleep. Catherine was a kind but busy caretaker as I could do much of nothing. I was worried I would never play again, or for that matter, even walk or walk right again.
After a number of weeks at home, I went back to work using crutches. The erector set looking contraption stuck out of the side of my left shin. I couldn’t put any weight on that leg. And that was the instruction for about four months. Crutches, no weight.
Then I got a walking cast and it was awesome to get rid off the crutches and start walking.
An aside, the doctor who took my pins out couldn’t find the proper tools when I went in that day to have the external fixation device dismantled and unscrewed from my bones.
I knew I was in trouble when he asked his nurse to bring his toolbox from his pick-up truck..
“Aren’t you going to give me some pain medication?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “There’s nothing really that works on this kind of thing.
Ok,, I said, sitting up on the table as he took out a pair of toolbox pliers.
The first turn is the only one that hurts, he said.
“Yeah, but there are six first turns ” I said.
It took a full year from time of injury to get back on the court again. I still carry around a 1-inch screw underneath a patch of skin with no feeling anymore.
When I did resume playing, I found my left leg very weak. In basketball, for a right-hander, the left leg is the most used. So to preserve my leg, I taught myself to go to my left hand, going up on my stronger right leg..
It opened up a whole new game for me. My left-hand coordination improved through use. I could shoot sweeping lefty hooks and even short jumpers with my left, which meant defenders had to be careful not to overplay one side.
What I did was find a workaround.
Now I don’t mean that Gordon Hayward needs this injury to work on his left hand. He’s already, I’m sure, pretty good with it.
But for me there’s a bigger lesson in my experience.
Many of you know, I have Lewy Body dementia. Read the About Me section for more details.
It’s a progressive brain disease which has symptoms like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. I wrote in an earlier piece on AL.com that there was an Alzheimer’s study of nuns who lived in isolation, which made them good study prospects because it limited the variables. While some nuns got Alzheimer’s there were other nuns who upon autopsy were found to have a lot of the plaques and tangles in the brain that would indicate Alzheimer’s. Yet they didn’t show any signs of the disease in life.
Researchers suggested their brains must have found ‘workarounds,’ physiological fixes.
The thread of this blog is counting down my record collection as a means of telling my story and ultimately bringing more awareness to Lewy body dementia.
The disease has affected my game. For the second time I am challenged to work with a physical deficit in my game. The only thing was that last time I could always limp away from the table, no harm no foul, “take up swimming,” my doctor would say.
This time there’s no walking away from. Lewy Body dementia.
The degenerative brain disease is the second leading cause of dementia after Alzheimer’s,and there is no cure.
But my experience with my leg, has shown me that good can come out of bad.
I’d have to agree with Theismann, the broken leg changed my life.
Get well soon Gordon.