MY COLUMN - Mike McMurran First Capitol News Sports Editor
Just in case anyone is counting, this marks the 82nd consecutive week of my contributing a column to this fine weekly; this week’s column almost didn’t happen. Allow me to explain.
It all started last Saturday when my eldest son Joe was scheduled to play his final, and I really do mean final soccer game of the season. Remember now, Joe has been playing with Tony Glavin now since August, and during the fall and spring, in addition to Glavin, he played with his classmates in either C.Y.C. or SCCYSA, so when I say final game it really was a big deal. As of Saturday there would be no soccer for Joe until July or August. The game was scheduled for a 5:15 start at Woodland Park in St. Peters. Joe’s brother Dee was feeling under the weather, so Lynn stayed home and Joe and I ventured out together; time for some father son bonding.
As fate would have it, the other team failed to show, which really was a big deal. You see Joe and Paige Murray gave up their Cardinal tickets to be at the soccer game. Andrew Clark had two games scheduled at the same time, one with his recreational team and one with his select team. Since this was the final game of the season, and the team was playing with the hopes of finishing the season with a perfect 10-0 record, Tom and Sheri Clark allowed Drew to decide which game he would attend; he passed on his select team to attend the final game of the season. So, if you will, the boys were “all dressed up with no where to go.” It was at this point someone came up with the great idea of the parents playing the kids. When I heard this my mind immediately started thinking at warp speed: I have on flip-flops, and the last thing I need to do is get hurt…”I’ll play goalie,” yelled out Dr. Dan Coogan. Yeah, that’s what I was going to say, but Coogan beat me to it. I had on flip-flops, you can’t play soccer in flip-flops. Then I remembered. In the trunk of my car I kept an old pair of football shoes that I wore only at mud bowls. The shoes were at least 2 or 3 sizes too large, but they were fine for mud bowls and would certainly be better than trying to play soccer in flip-flops.
Granted I am over weight, O.K., I am fat, but I had no idea eight year-olds could run so fast. They literally ran circles around me. At one point I asked Dr. Dan, remember Dr. Dan, the quick thinker who was playing goal, “How many bones are in your foot?” To which he replied 40 or so. “It feels like I just broke half of them,” I shouted back, jokingly…or so I thought.
Ultimately the parents won the contest with little, or no help from me. I took off my mud bowl, oversized football shoes and returned to my favored flip-flops. We all said our good-byes and headed our own ways. Later that evening Joe and I decided to do some more father-son bonding and went shopping for a Mother’s Day gift. That’s when it hit me. I could hardly walk. As difficult as walking was, climbing up a step was practically impossible. I was in some serious, serious pain. Once home I explained to Lynn how my foot was killing me, to which she replied,” My foot hurts every day.” So much for sympathy from my lovely wife.
During the middle of the night, as fate would have it, nature called. I literally had to crawl to the rest room, as my foot would not support any weight. The next morning as the family attended Mass I opted for urgent health care, my first ever visit to such a place. The doctor on duty took x-rays and declared, “Your foot is broken in at least three places.” Wow, I thought to myself, I wasn’t too far off base when I told the quick thinking Dr. Dan I felt like I broke half the bones in my foot. “Stay off your foot completely and see a specialist as soon as you can,” were the Doctor’s final bits of advice. “I will give you something for the pain.” And he did.
The remainder of Sunday I was in a pain pill trance. First thing Monday morning I called my primary care doctor and he referred me to a specialist. The problem was the specialist could not see me until Tuesday evening around 5 p.m. So all day Monday and all day Tuesday I simply stayed in bed and took the prescribed pain pills. Remember, I had to stay off my foot “completely.” I knew not what 5 pm Tuesday would bring, but I dreaded it.
Five minutes into the specialist’s office he declared, “your ankle is fine.” I tried to explain to him that it was my foot that was broken, not my ankle. “No, it says here these are x-rays of your ankle, and I see no problem.” I then asked him if I could walk on it and he said sure, go ahead. He was right, there was no pain at all, in my foot or ankle. Of course I had been taking the pain pills every four hours to insure no pain would creep up on me, but this surprised me. “I was told not to walk on my foot until I saw a specialist, because it, my foot, was broke in at least three places,” I tried to explain to the Doc, but he would have no part of it as he walked out the door saying “well then, that’s it and I am out of here.”
My point? I’m not even sure I have a point. Oh yeah, I remember, even though I have been in bed for almost three days, with nothing wrong with me, paying close attention to the Doctor’s orders (“stay completely off your foot”), I was able to make my 82nd consecutive column.
