A month prior to this monstrosity, I was a normal, energetic nineteen year old. However, one rugby game would proceed to put me in one painful, confusing predicament. I had withheld a passion for rugby for a couple of years before the accident. I loved everything about it: the pain, the team work, the highlight tackles. I loved everything about the sport and the life that went along with playing rugby: the people, the drinking, the dirty playing tricks (dump tackles, trips, cleating opposing players’ ribs in the scrum). We were engaged in a scrimmage game against the University of Louisiana Lafayette; when I blocked an attempted pop kick by the opposing outside center, I immediately leaped over the downed center and attempted to pounce on the unguarded ball. The ball sat just over the try line. Five points were up in the air and it was up to me to make sure those points went to my team. I eyes widened as I tried to take this moment into comprehension, my palms clenched as I prepared to make my dash for the oblong ball, I sprang over Number 11 like a gazelle running from a pride of lions. With my body exposed and my leg extended, one of those hungry lions fell over that Number 11 and rolled into the side of my knee causing and instant popping sound to echo throughout the field. The game stopped; I stopped; I think I remember my heart stopping for an instant. there was no doubt in my mind that something went horribly wrong. I could still walk, but I proceeded to hobble off the field and onto the sidelines. A group of friends and my father welcomed me as I stumbled to a sad patch of brown-green grass roots. With one look at me, they knew something was different. They were used to that laughing, red cheeked, bleeding, excited kid to run off that field; this time they saw a confused, depressed, limping soul plopped miserably on the edge of the field that was so special. My knee felt like jello immediately after the bone cringing noise, but the lack of cartilage and ligaments was amplified with every step I took from the field to the sideline and the sideline to the emergency room. Exactly a month later I woke up from possibly the most miserable surgery possible.
