Torn

Well...  Yesterday's events make the post from Friday seem like serendipity. 
Do you ever notice that injuries rarely happen when people are doing something epic?  I hear so many stories of people breaking their ankle or screwing up their knee seemingly out of nowhere.  They just fell.  They were just playing derby.  They were just doing the things they do every day.
I just fell.
We were doing a two on one blocking drill.  I was blocking.  I was actually having a pretty good day for blocking.  I was making nice waterfalls, protecting the inside line.  I had been having a little trouble over committing to one side and losing my balance, but I could actually tell that was the problem whereas before I would fall without knowing why.  There was nothing particularly amazing about the fall.  I landed on my knees and I felt some pain.  Not extraordinary pain but when I stood up something felt wrong.  My knee felt a little loose somehow.
One of my friends loves to tell a story about the time she sustained some sort of knee injury but it didn't feel like much so she ignored it.  When woke up the following morning she says she was in so much pain she couldn't even scream.  This didn't feel like much but I thought of her and got off my skates anyway.  Ice was applied.  I sat and watched my team do the drills that I REALLY need to be doing right now with panic rising in the back of my throat.  It wasn't starting to feel better, it was starting to feel worse. 
I'm the kind of person who likes to make her own decisions and take care of herself.  When one of my referee friends said I should go to the ER I balked a little.  I didn't want to wait to see someone but it also didn't seem like an actual emergency.  I agreed that was probably the best idea anyway.  I didn't know where else to go.  I received a Jet City Rollergirls crutch and got some help out to my car.  As I eased myself gingerly into the drivers seat the skater who helped me out, someone I barely know, asked if I wanted her to go with me to the hospital.
I did.  I really really did.

So she came with me.  She made me sit in the car once we got there while she got me a wheelchair to take me in.  She cracked jokes with me while we waited - first to see the doctor and then for X-rays.  She cringed on my behalf when they started pushing and pulling on my knee and found the sweet spot where it REALLY HURTS.  She piped up and helped me to remember to ask the kinds of important questions I always forget to ask doctors when I see them.  She said she was paying it forward.  I too vow to someday take an injured skater to the ER.  You shouldn't have to go alone.
The diagnosis was roughly this:  it could be a strained knee or a torn ACL.  Go get an MRI.  So as of today that's what I know.  I'm hoping for the best and trying not to think about the worst.  The outpouring of support from friends and skaters has been amazing and very much what I needed.  When I've had sports injuries before I always felt like I was going in blind without knowing what to ask or how to advocate for myself.  Now I have a community of people helping me to know which questions are the right ones.
<posted on 3.25.12>