Pain in My Knees, Joy in My Heart
My slow but steady return to playing basketball
If you read my previous story on my lifelong love affair with playing basketball then you know, I played for 55 years, right up until I had to get my right knee replaced.
I did that on Oct. 18, 2023, and I have to admit that I did not give the procedure the respect it deserved. As an arrogant asshole, I figured since I’d been walking, hiking and playing basketball for ten years with end-stage arthritis in both knees, that I knew pain.
I didn’t.
I walked around the hospital a couple hours after surgery, and went home the same day. I was full of all the drugs they pumped into me when I got home and didn’t feel much pain.
The next morning, it hurt, but was bearable with the pain medication. So that night I made the mistake of not setting my alarm to take pain meds on schedule.
I woke up literally screaming like a little kid on the playground when they saw a spider. The last time I screamed like that I was yelling “Encore!” at a concert by The Who in the 80’s.
It took me a couple days more of pain meds every six hours until I tried to cut them off again, and this time I was successful. But it hurt.
Man, did it hurt.
But that didn’t matter to my physical therapist. He was at my door on the fourth day, walked me outside to my back deck and started putting me through various strength and range of motion drills. After I struggled through them he gave me an incredulous look and said:
"You are farther along than anyone that I have ever seen at three days, post-surgery.”
He went on, “How old are you? 64? No way. The guy who held the record before was a bartender in his mid 40's! This is going to be fun! You are going to kick ass!”
The next day I got a call from my surgeon’s office. No more in-home PT, I was to start twice-a-week, out-patient Physical Therapy at their facility the next day.
I jettisoned the walker they made me take home and very gingerly walked in under my own power. The head of the knee department personally took on my case, and the very first thing he did was double check the in-home therapist’s results.
“Dude, you are a monster. How can you do this so early?”
I took my health insurance for everything it would give me, and was able to get 24 consecutive weeks of twice a week sessions.
It really paid off.
By the last eight sessions, I was doing athletic performance training: dribbling a basketball around cones and through ladders, box jumps, balance board work, weights, pushing and pulling a heavy sled, sprints, etc.
My knee still hurt quite a bit, and I was really sore afterwards, but my spirits soared.
I started shooting hoops again in April, three months after my 65th birthday. I was surprised that I still found it painful.
Both my replaced knee and the other one (still with end-stage arthritis) did not react well to the repeated impact of jumping up and down. Both knees became very swollen and I limped around for a couple days after each practice session.
But I was shooting hoops again!
Another thing that I found really strange was that my shooting motion did not come back to me automatically. Like the people you see on television that have to re-learn how to walk after a catastrophic injury, I had to teach my body the same motion that I had done tens of thousands of times in my life.
I was not using my legs properly, and every shot was hitting the front of the rim. But I kept at it. By the end of each practice session I had a reasonable facsimile of my old jump shot.
A couple weeks ago, I actually played my first game of half-court basketball. I quit early, not wanting to push it, but I went as hard as I could for one game.
At first I was putting up bricks but after a while I started to get in rhythm. I couldn’t really drive to the hoop, but I could slide over to play defense. Not particularly good, but not bad, either! I even hit a few shots, and my team stayed close up to the end of the game.
Finally, my opponent decided, “fuck this” and blew by me a couple times in a row — taking advantage of my sore knees and winning the game.
But it was a start and now I just have to continue to persevere in acclimating my knee to all of the stops and starts, and, of course, the impact of jumping and landing.
I’m sure my game will get back to 50% of where it was when I was forced to quit playing, which was 10% of what it was when I was healthy. I’m sure my other knee will surrender at some point as well, and when it does, I will go through the process all over again.
But for now, I am on the road to playing my favorite sport again.
I couldn’t be happier.
Thank you for reading my story. If you enjoyed this and my previous story on pickup basketball, you might enjoy my new book.
