A Real Bad Day...

April 14, 2010.


Things in life were improving.  Work life was getting better, as a new zest for life was coming to fruition, as the catalyst was exercise.  Married life started improving, as I wasn't always suffering from bad moods and exhaustion.

Drill was in the house that morning, at the Indian Valley YMCA.  Drill's workouts were always different from the other instructors.  Drill's workouts were...different.  He always mixed it up, giving you different ways to tackle motivation, harness it, and exact it upon some unsuspecting passerby.  He drove us to new heights.

He designated that morning as "ARMY PT Test" morning.  We were going to see how many situps and pushups we could do in a minute.  And then we were heading out on a 2 mile run.  We were being timed by the now notorious BBM (Barbara Beth Martin), so we were gonna go get after it for an hour.

We headed outside, and started with pushups.  My AB, Patrick O'Neil, started off.  I'm pretty sure he eclipsed 60+, as an experienced veteran.  Then came my turn.

I remember my first day.  We did pushups that day.  I could do 4.  Without stopping.  4.  Four.  F. O. U. R.  Four.

That day, I felt pretty good.  This was 5 weeks in.  I did 52.  I couldn't believe it.

Then we did situps.  Patrick hit some obscene number near the triple digits.  I didn't fare nearly as well, as I think I was only around the 40 mark.  Way up from the zero I could actually do the first day without evacuating my dinner from the previous evening.  Or at least some gaseous representation of it.

So, I was pretty happy.  Pretty motivated.  Pretty excited.  The group took off on a run, which I still wasn't acclimated to doing.  Melissa and I stayed in the back of the pack.  She told me how many pushups and situps she did, how proud of herself she was.  How she couldn't believe how far she had come in 5 weeks.  Shannon was with us.  I'm not sure who was the proudest of the two of us.  Me, Melissa, or Shannon.

We caught up to the group as they were completing this two mile jaunt around a cinder-based track near an elementary school.  I took off, trying to keep my breathing steady, my shoulders relaxed, and motor through two miles like it was nothing, when in reality it was the farthest I'd run since high school.

I finished up, and some people were still motoring along.  Melissa wasn't really supposed to run that much, as she has a condition that causes her bones to be quite brittle, and a break could happen from anything majorly high-impact.  So, she was slowly trotting around the track.  Working hard, since she always did.

So, she hits her last straight-away.  Patrick is with her.  Drill is with her.  LKC is with her.  People motivating her along, telling her she can do it, to sprint off the rest few steps.  To work hard.  To finish strong. 

And she did.  She was strong.  I saw it all.  I saw that fire in her eyes.  I saw her smiling.

She crossed the finish line, triumphant.  She took that last tell to transition back to walking.  And then everybody who was there that day, will tell you, heard something pop.

POP.

Melissa's Achilles tendon tore.  It tore in half.  Like an old rope on a sailboat that has been pulled taught one to many times.  Completely shredded.

She collapsed onto Patrick O'Neil.  Her world collapsed.  Her life collapsed.  My entire outlook on the future twisted on that cinder track.  Everything she had worked toward for the past 5 weeks was obliterated.  It happened in an instant.

Drill and Patrick helped her into the Jeep.  She couldn't move it.  Luckily she wasn't in that much pain.  I stood there, helpless.  I couldn't fix anything now.  I was picturing her needing surgery, laying in bed, or on a couch, for months.  What would I do?  The program and exercise routine I was starting to fall in love with just tore my wife into a million pieces.

We got home, and I grabbed a few things to take to the hospital, like my phone, wallet, etc.  Drill ran over from his house, and duct-taped a giant ice-pack to her ankle.  He gave her a kiss and said "stay motivated."  I could tell that he might have been a little heart-broken over it.  All three of us were.

I took her to the hospital.  ER doc fitted her with a temporary cast, told us to see an orthopedist, and sent us along.  By 1pm that day, we met with a surgeon, scheduled an MRI for the next day, and went home.  Tears flowed.  I tried consoling her.  Not much was going to improve her mood.

She had surgery on the 22nd of April.  What followed was a summer of her being on the couch for most of it.  I was still working in Jersey.

The amazing thing that happened was that members of the DDIP family brought us dinners, came and visited, continually asked about her and how she was doing.  I didn't miss a class because of the injury (an advantage of the class being at 5:30am), so it was still helping me, but hurting her every day because I could go and she couldn't.

[DISCLAIMER:  We knew that something like this could happen, so we never really blamed the DDIP program for her getting hurt.  It was just unfortunate that it happened there.  She could have been walking our dog, stepped off of a curb, and torn it then.  Never will we ever direct the blame anywhere except for a case of bad luck and terrible timing.)