I've been playing with the same soccer team, the Faceblasters, for nearly two years. We recently joined a new league at Asphalt Green, and I was rarin' to go for our game last Thursday.
Sometime during the second half, I chased down the ball and planted wrong on my left foot. I felt a *pop* in my knee followed by shockwaves of pain. I dropped to the ground and nearly hyperventilated as I fought off blinding pain and nausea. Looking back, I'm surprised I didn't realize right away that I'd torn my ACL.
Someone insisted I straighten my leg, then my teammates carried me to a bench. I laid down with my leg elevated and ice on my knee for the remaining 20 minutes of the game. I was hoping the pain would subside, but it didn't. A teammate had just broken his ankle a few weeks before, so although normally I would've taken a cab home and waited until the morning, I decided to go to Urgent Care *just in case*.
While the entire hospital staff watched LeBron announce his move to Miami in the waiting room, I got the bad news from a doctor. I'd been waiting for nearly two hours to see someone, and the pain had subsided significantly by that point. I was convinced she was mistaken. But she described it as "textbook" and said that although she hoped she was wrong, the best I could probably hope for was a partial tear.
