The case I'm making at home lately – and I'm getting some serious push-back – is that I'm as tough as, maybe even tougher than, New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
Ridiculous, my football-savvy son says. Preposterous.
How could a 73-year-old semi-couch-potato make such a claim? How could a card-carrying geezer compare himself to Hall of Fame-bound Rodgers? The very thought borders on blasphemy.
I'll explain.
On August 23rd I was mowing the prairie at our house when the front wheels of my riding mower fell into a badger hole.
I tried to pull the front of the mower out of the hole. No soap. So I went behind the mower, and was pushing with all my might when the wheels came out of the hole, the mower lurched forward, and I fell with my foot at an angle it's never been at before, stressing the daylights out of my Achilles' tendon.
I was able, however, to get back on my feet, finish mowing, and put the mower away.
“Gonna have a sore leg tomorrow,” I said to my wife, a retired nurse practitioner who always tells me she's “seen people way sicker than you.”
I sure did have a sore leg the next day. Hobbling around, my sense of balance shot, I was limping like Chester Goode on “Gunsmoke.”
It kept up like that for two months, during which I nevertheless mowed lawns, closed up my cabin for the winter, even climbed a ladder to take the chimney down. I blew out the sprinklers at home. I fixed a fence gate. I grocery shopped and cooked dinners.
We thought it was just a calf muscle tear, like that suffered this year by Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Russell Wilson.
“Only Wilson doesn't whine about it like you do,” my son said. (Takes after his mother.)
Lack of progress caused us to get an ultrasound. Then an MRI. The MRI told the tale:
Old Dave severed his right Achilles' tendon that night pushing his mower out of the badger hole.
And here's the interesting part. I kept right on doing all the stuff I normally do, except with a severed Achilles'.
Compare that to the case of Aaron Rodgers, who was immediately carted off the field last year when he severed his Achilles'. In his injured state, he never had to climb a ladder to take down a chimney. No mowing lawns. No making dinner. He got the best care available, and (thankfully) he's back on the field today.
Hence, my claim that I'm as tough, or maybe tougher, than Aaron Rodgers. (Don't laugh.) (Please.)
My surgery to put that tendon back together – the frayed ends were a couple inches apart – took place last Monday with those great docs over in Laramie who patch up UW football players, and did some amazing work on Josh Allen.
Problem is, an injury like this takes weeks of keeping weight off that leg, then more weeks, maybe months, of physical therapy. It's the right leg, so no driving. No walking.
Wheelchair. Walker. Crutches.
In aviation, they call a plane that's always in the shop for repairs a “hangar queen.” After multiple orthopedic repairs over the years, I'm feeling like a real hangar queen.
Until further notice, I'm like a beached whale, washed up on our living room floor, with a bulky cast on my leg that's like having a 10-pound Walleye strapped to my calf, only stiffer. Clumsy, knocking things over, house-bound, I'm like the phrase my Oklahoma-bred wife uses:
“I don't know if I'm washin' or hangin' out.”
To shower, I have to wrap my leg in Saran Wrap like a chicken casserole, then put it in a garbage bag and duct tape it shut, to keep the splint dry.
In addition to my Nurse Ratched wife, my daughter is a physician assistant. So there's no shortage of expertise, and scolding if I do too much. (They've both seen people way sicker than I am. But then, they've both seen people who are, well, dead.)
I'll get through this. Thankfully, writing opinion columns seldom requires intact Achilles' tendons.
In the meantime, I keep making my case that I'm tougher than the great Aaron Rodgers.
(So far, nobody's buying it.)
Dave Simpson can be reached at: DaveSimpson145@hotmail.com
