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Friday, September 14, 2007

Gruesome Sports Injury Descriptions

Tampa Bay logoNothing like a detached, clinical description of a nasty sports injury as provided by the person who suffered the trauma:

"Crunched against the boards, he said he felt his hips "pushed together, and I felt something pop off my pubic bone." "

Full article on the Tampa Bay Lightning's Tim Taylor and his hip surgery and recovery.

For anyone who has experienced a serious injury, the whole saga gets refined and polished over time and is relayed to numerous people along the way. From the initial incident, to the hospital ordeal, rehab and the eventual return to your former self (or a semblance thereof), it all gets packaged into a narrative for friends and family and assorted lunatics who stop you on the street.

There's almost a therapeutic aspect to detailing the visceral minutiae of how your body was splintered, mashed and hammered into its damaged state. Perhaps the shock value and listeners' reactions are a few of the reasons or maybe it's due to the fact that you're actually giving those gape-mouthed voyeurs a hit of well-being. There’s a subconscious sense of contentment that they haven’t suffered some similar fate and are in relative good health. It feels good to make others feel good about themselves.

For a professional athlete, the scrutiny and attention regarding an injury is ramped up by many degrees. For someone like Taylor who has gone through so much pain and discomfort, it would be genuinely rewarding for both him and many fans if he could return to the NHL. If not, at least he should be able to live a relatively pain free existence due to the advancements in sports medicine.

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