My Chiropractor's Car, or More on Athletic Injuries

Taking up the theme of the Super Bowl and football injuries again, my own bad back came back to haunt me this morning. I injured a disc in my lower back playing football during my senior year of high school. It wasn't one particular play. My back just started hurting.

One trip to the chiropractor fixed it and the only time my back bothered me for the next fifteen years was my freshman year of college.

But, the combination of my dissertation, a year in London, and the collapse of my first marriage resulted in my getting less exercise and the disc that had been injured in high school started bulging again. The day after I finished my dissertation (and foolishly tried to start exercising again), I was in agony and could barely move.

That's the way it is with these kinds of high school sports injuries. Like some kinds of viruses, they lay dormant for years before they start having their real impact.

That was more than twenty years ago and the sins of high school football have been haunting me ever since.

Not that my chiropractor minds.

He has a really nice car.

For professional football players, the long-term injury situation is tens of times worse. They play four years of high impact football before going on to careers in the NFL. I used to see reports of offensive linemen and running backs who could barely get out of bed for two days after a game when they were playing. Unfortunately, the injuries that they play through during their careers never go away. The old injuries just get more painful as the cartilege, ligaments, and tendons continue to deteriorate, arthritis sets in, and joint replacements are needed.

At my university, the football players occasionally wear morale-boosting shirts that say "the pain is temporary, the pride lasts forever."

But the truth is exactly the opposite. The pride is temporary. It's the pain that lasts forever. And it increases over time. As I noted yesterday, my old hero Conrad Dobler now needs 150 Vicodin per month, about five per day to deal with the pain from his leg injuries. It's not going to get any better for him.

Time to stretch my back out again.

Oh yeah! The Colts won the Super Bowl.