Having been an athlete all my life, I’ve always been a competitor. I’ve played football, basketball, baseball, then recreationally picked up golf, slow pitch softball, and Sunday league baseball.
Being that I had such a strong desire to try every sport I could get my hands on after college, I would try just about anything with set rules just to get the feel for competing in something.
Well, thanks to my best friends from high school, I developed a love for hockey. I was always interested and fond of the sport of hockey from when I was young. I could wheel around in my roller blades, street hockey net, and pretend like I was Teemu Selanne scoring a game-winning goal.
After there was a lull in my recreational sporting game, I had an opportunity to play in a league with my buddies, so I took it. The next 2 months, I would practice until I felt good enough to hold my own in an actual game. Not only was I excited to play a new sport that I have been a fan of for years, I got to play with my absolute best friends in the world. I never had the chance to be on a team with them through high school, so, here we were.
With each game, I got more comfortable. I started to get the feel for the game and the competition level was good enough to challenge me, which was huge. I was having the time of my life competing with my best friends and playing a new sport. About half way through the season, I remember going on the ice for our 5 minute warm ups and just not feeling right. I felt uneasy on my skates and noticed my skate edges were not catching the ice. It didn’t make sense to me because I had just gotten my skates re-sharpened.
As the puck drops and we’re about a minute and a half into the game, we have a stoppage of play and we make a line change. I take the ice nervous as hell because I still couldn’t shake the feeling of uneasiness that I had.
As I lined up on the face-off, the puck dropped and I got tangled up with the forward I lined up against off the face-off and fell as the puck was dumped into our offensive zone. As I got up from my fall, I tried to stand, and what do you know my edge doesn’t grab the ice like I would expect and I slipped. When I slip, I try to catch myself with my right leg, and in a perfect storm of unfortunate events, my tibia snaps near my ankle.
As soon as I landed from that fall, I knew it was broken. To describe what it felt like, I usually tell people that initially, it didn’t really hurt. You feel a snap or a pop. You may even hear it, but in this case, I didn’t. I felt a vibrating, tingling sensation down my leg and I knew it was bad news. My buddy skated over and asked if I’m okay, to which I responded immediately, “No, man, I broke my leg. It’s broken.” I literally could not believe that I played a competitive sport for 16 years and was lucky enough to never have a serious injury, and when I choose to play recreational hockey, I snap my leg. After about 5 minutes, the pain sets in and by that time the paramedics have arrived. They took my gear off, which was excruciatingly painful. My buddy says I almost broke his hand squeezing so hard as they took off my skate.
I got hauled off to the hospital in loads of pain and a continued feeling of uneasiness that didn’t leave for quite some time after. When they x-ray my leg, they find that not only did I break my tibia down by my ankle, I broke my fibula up by my knee.
One of my more memorable takeaways from that night was the amount of support that I had around me. I not only had my family by my side, but about half the team showed up at the hospital after they finished their game. Mind you, it was about 1 in the morning when they showed up. Those are the kind of guys you want in your corner and the kind of teammates you want.
To fast forward, I had surgery on my leg and they inserted a titanium rod down the top of my shin and secured it with a screw at the top and the bottom. This is by far the most painful thing I have ever endured and hope to ever endure. And I found myself terribly regretting my decision to play in the first place. I hysterically cried because my ability to walk had been taken away from me. I had no independence from that day going forward, seeing that I had everyone doing everything for me. No longer able to work, I felt utterly lost.
This isn’t a post to garner sympathy. We’ve all been through our own uphill battles. This was my first major battle and we’re still in the fight. 17 months post op, I am still unable to run. 6 months ago, it was hard to walk. Now I walk virtually pain free. My finish line goal is to be able to run again. Something so simple and something that we often take for granted. I will forever be thankful for my ability to run and jump and do all the things athletically that I can when this is all over.
For those of you that have gone through your own “broken leg moment,” I want you to know that first of all, as lame as it may sound, everything happens for a reason.
If I hadn’t broken my leg, I probably wouldn’t have ever quit my job. Something in the universe knew that I wasn’t happy where I was at. Second, you will get through it. I’m so grateful for the amount of support that I had and I don’t know that I would’ve made it through without having such great people in my corner.
Third, you have two options: wallow, or go to battle. I could have easily said, “screw it,” and accepted that I was going to let this situation get the best of me. But I didn’t. I battled through and told myself now that I will run again and I will compete again because that is what I love to do.
My journey to recovery is why I’m here, helping others along their own. I train people to make their life better.
I don’t know your battle but I can tell you I’ve had my fair share. It comes down to what you want to do. What is your why? Why do you want to be in “better shape?” Lose 20 lbs? What is that gonna do for you? We must have these answers to move forward and get better. Have a goal and have a plan, the rest is easy.
Westbrook Training 