Leistungskurs l2 E 0l (Ly)   (Dezember 2002)

ACL     by Daniel Hähle

About one year ago I was invited to a party near my parents‘ house. We celebrated the birthday of a friend of ours and spent a great time together. About half past eleven p.m. I got a phone-call from my parents on my cell-phone. They told me my coach had called them a few minutes ago and that he wanted me to play on a tournament in Berlin the very next day. First I was a bit confused, because I had had a conversation with him two days ago, in which he had told me that I wasn‘t going to take part in this trip. I hesitated, but finally I said yes and left the party abruptly. After I had arrived at home, l packed my bags as quickly as I could and went to sleep, because I had to get up at six o‘clock the next morning.

Right after our arrival in Berlin the next day we had to prepare ourselves for the first basketball game in the tournament. We did our stretching and talked over the tactics for the game. Everything seemed normal so far. I wasn‘t one of the starters and so I sat down on the bench. I wished I could play from the very beginning, but tried not to think about it and not to lose my concentration. After five long minutes in the first quarter I finally entered the court. I had taken on quite a job and wanted to show my coach that it was a wrong decision letting me sit on the bench for such a long time. First I tried to play good defence on my opponent and after a few minutes I realised that the other side gave us the chance to make some easy baskets in the offence. Somehow I got the ball in our offensive play and tried to get through to the basket. But as I span around my opponent in order to have a better view of the basket, I suddenly felt a strong pushing from the side. I tried to stay on my feet but felt a strange pain in my left knee and fell to the ground. The first moment I didn‘t realise what had happened to me a few seconds ago — so I stayed there, lying on the court. Although it wasn‘t painful any more I had tears in my eyes. The doctor of the other team came to me and asked me some questions about what I felt at the knee. After one minute or so I was carried from the basketball court to our bench. The doctor gave me instructions to cool the knee and I did so. But after a while it swelled badly and the pain returned as I tried to take some small steps. I don‘t really remember the rest of the game and it didn‘t seem to be important to me anyway. In the end we lost.

In the evening of the same day we returned to Hamburg, my father picked me up at a railway station and drove home. My parents were completely shocked and still no one knew what had happened to my knee. That night I had to sleep downstairs because I couldn‘t climb up the stairs to my room. I often asked myself  “Why me?“ but I never got an answer. The next day a doctor came to see me and made some suggestions as to what kind of injury it could be. In order to get things straight I went to another doctor who took a CT (computerized axial tomography) of my knee. He told me that it was ACL, Anterior Cruciate Ligament, just what my parents and I had suspected. This diagnosis resulted in an operation and subsequent three months of rehabilitation. In addition I wasn‘t allowed to play basketball for nearly one year. lt was terrible to sit at home watching basketball games on TV and knowing that I couldn‘t do this.

But I worked very hard in the past twelve months and today I‘m able to do all the things again I missed so much.

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