How I tore my ACL… or did I?

 

Yesterday morning, as I sat typing away on my Mac in The Sentinel office, a bewildering expression transcended our news editor’s face; a look that immediately led me to believe something unpleasant was quickly approaching.

But first, let’s preface this story with that of where the entire scenario begins:

It was brought to my attention that a female, 19-year-old student was caught in a Sandpoint bar by police. Rather than face the music and accept her doom (I can’t imagine the fine that would be levied against her, much less the bar), she darted out the back door – much like I would have done at that age - and attempted to elude the cops. I say “attempted” because she was, in fact, quite unsuccessful. For, although she denies the cops yelled, “Stop!” she succumbed to their enforcing ways as the target to their taser. Now, she believes she will successfully sue the department for excessive force.

Excessive force? Are you kidding me? While she drunkenly denies that the cops asked her to stop, she still ran from the cops! How is detaining her by any means necessary “excessive force?” I hope she loses, and gets a HUGE fine.

This was all presented to myself and Scott (News Editor) as a potential story for The Sentinel. While I obviously disagree with the woman, we decided some sort of story should be written. But then Scott and I disagreed further: I think the 19-year-old woman is a friggin’ retard, and deserves every penalty levied against her, but Scott and our A/E Editor believe the cops are at fault.

And that’s when I noticed that grimace across Scott’s face.

“Excessive force?” he bellowed. “I’ll show you excessive force!”

He lunged toward me from across the room, arms wide as he bear-hugged me in my chair. I, tired from a long night of boozing the night before, unknowingly expected a full tackle from him (he’s been known to take me down before), and thus responded immediately in my irritated, hungover mentality: I blindly wrapped my arm around his head in a make-shift headlock and threw all my weight toward the opposite direction of his lean.

Bad mistake.

We half-circled out of my chair and toward another desk. I knew all 440 pounds of our combined mass was sure to pound the back of my head against that desk, yet as I missed it by mere inches, threw my knee into his gut before hitting the floor. Given his large mass (roughly the same as my own) and our momentum toward the floor, it makes sense that his body tweaked my knee so bad I erupted into a series of screaming yelps.

At first, I though my knee was completely broken. I writhed in pain on the floor, clutching my knee as I tried to recollect what just transpired. Immediately, I knew that his full weight had pushed my knee in a sideways hyperextension. How bad? I prayed for the best yet prepared for the worst.

It turned out I could still stand on it – barely – and could hobble around the room in pain. My knees are bad to begin with, yet this was the most pain I had experienced yet. Of course, I was instantly called a pussy for whining, and so I ignored the injury for the time being.

Last night, however, it progressively got worse. What started as a raging pain behind my knee, spread down to the top of my calf and circled around the side of my knee. I researched the symptoms on WebMD and was given the worst diagnosis I could hope for: A torn ACL.

Well, let’s just hope that I’m overhyping the extent of this injury, and perhaps it’s just a sprain or strain. Needless to say, I’m still in an immense amount of pain, and using crutches today only helps. But when I go to Oregon next week, I’ll definitely be seeing the family doctor.

Who else but me gets a common athletic disaster of an injury in the most unathletic of places – a college newsroom? I always knew The Sentinel would lead to my demise.