I stayed in our apartment through the end of the lease term after Selena and I parted ways. I was working through intense emotion, but I also had intense coping mechanisms. I began rock climbing three to four times a week. I lifted weights when I wasn’t climbing, and stayed for yoga sessions at my climbing gym when I was. I summited several mountains in a few months as part of a new, aggressive hiking regimen. As soon as there was snow on the Utah mountains I began skiing, which, as a lifelong adrenaline junkie, I did not treat as a leisure sport.
Toward the end of the lease, I went on a camping and climbing trip with a pair of recently acquired friends in southern Utah. The last day I woke up with what felt like bruising on the tip of my elbow. It seemed a little more serious than just a bruise, but I felt mostly fine so I brushed it off and climbed that day anyway. On the drive back home, the pain in my elbow became progressively more intense. The joint became swollen and the skin around it turned a shade of red and felt warm to the touch.
Thinking I had a acquired an overuse injury from my active lifestyle, I wrapped my elbow in compression tape. When I got home I employed the sporting injury recovery techniques I was already familiar with, but my elbow kept getting worse. A couple days after coming home, I saw a doctor over a video call who said I had likely gotten bursitis, a diagnosis I expected because it’s a typical overuse injury for climbers. He also said that occasionally the bursa sack on a joint can become infected, and prescribed me a short course of oral antibiotics to prevent issues, just in case.
A week later I felt perfectly fine. I was, by all measurable appearances, completely myself again. There was some small pain in my elbow that caused a bit of a pit to collect in my stomach, but lingering pain after straining the body too far is usual. I went slower on the climbing, and redirected my nervous energy toward hurtling myself twenty feet in the air on skis.
My pain flatlined in the following weeks, and my elbow stopped improving. I lived an unusually healthy lifestyle, so I felt a little nervous that the joint wasn’t healing faster. About a month after seeing the doctor the pain and swelling came back in force, so I made another video appointment. This time the doctor insisted I be examined in-person and would not write a prescription. Out of frustration I pushed back - the medication worked the first time around, there had probably just been lingering bacterial cells that survived. I just needed a longer course of antibiotics.
He wouldn’t budge. It was Christmas eve, so I reluctantly went to the emergency room because urgent care facilities were closed. After explaining my story to a doctor there, I started another course of antibiotics.
Later I tried to have the prescription refilled over a video call. Again the doctor refused. Annoyed, I went to an urgent care facility to retell my story a fourth time. The doctor reluctantly renewed the prescription, but insisted I follow up with a specialist. I was clearly healthy, why were these doctors so worried?
Truthfully though, I was afraid of going. I didn’t want to. Dealing with hospitals and doctors and medical treatment didn’t scare me, I already had enough experience with that from a reckless childhood. I didn’t want to accrue unnecessary medical bills, but more than anything else I was nervous that what was happening with my elbow was more serious. I didn’t want to go, because all of my coping mechanisms relied on my body working correctly. How would I cope emotionally if I couldn’t stay active? I was afraid of being sick.
During the second and third round of oral antibiotics I persisted in skiing, and took a couple falls that triggered disproportionate amounts of pain relative to the impact. The nervous feeling sat in my gut while I tried to ignore it. The inflammation in my elbow had subsided, but joint pain was still present.
I finally gave in to the advice given to me several times by different doctors and scheduled a follow-up with a specialist. At the appointment an orthopedic surgeon performed an ultrasound examination on my joint. After the ultrasound he asked for an X-ray. When the X-ray was finished he sent me to radiology for an MRI. Most doctors do not casually order an MRI. I went home wondering what I could expect going forward, but I didn’t have to wait long because he called me back into his office the next day. He said it was urgent.
There was a day in elementary school where I tried to play soccer with the other kids my age. I had never been introduced to soccer, so they explained the rules in straightforward terms - score points by getting the ball into the other team’s goal. That seemed simple enough, so with the first opportunity that came I picked up the ball, ran the length of the field, and threw it into the net. My playmates were not happy.
After being ostracized from the playing field, I went home and told my parents I wanted to learn how to play soccer. I suspect my seven year old self had nothing more in mind than learning the rules well enough to gain social acceptance. Instead, that request launched a career in competitive soccer that defined much of my identity until I reached adulthood.
I played enough soccer to fill a part time job. I had practices two or three times per week, and usually a couple games. I would regularly be driven by my own or a teammate’s parents long distances for a game, sometimes up to two hours one way on a weekday after school. When that happened it would take about six hours all together. The outdoor season was in session during spring and fall, but in the winter I played indoor soccer or futsal, a fast-paced version of soccer played with a smaller, heavier ball on something like a basketball court. Summer was tournament season, which meant even more travel than the regular season.
Coming into the spring soccer season of my senior year in high school, I was a starting varsity midfielder. My academic performance was excellent and had already guaranteed a college scholarship, but I loved soccer and part of me wanted to continue playing in college. I hoped that with this season I might be able to get a second, athletic scholarship.
During conditioning weeks ahead of the season I ran two miles per day, and five miles on the weekend. I was never a track star, but I still had a mile time respectably under six minutes. I met with my team at 6:30 in the morning several times a week to run up and down stairs, sprint, and do strengthening exercises. More than once I sprinted myself to the point of vomiting, and, after drinking enough water to clear the sourness from my mouth, kept running. When I wasn’t running I was “getting touches on the ball” to improve my footwork.
I worked extremely hard for soccer. I wasn’t the best player on my team or in my home state by any means, that title probably goes to one of my former teammates who ended up as a kicker in the NFL. But I was definitely better than many of the kids playing the sport. I felt I had earned my position as a starter, and I wanted to make something of my senior season.
As the start of the season drew nearer there was also a growing feeling in my gut that I needed to let soccer go and sit the season out. I was only pushing seventeen, but I had learned to recognize that feeling of the Spirit, loud and clear. But who would I be if I didn’t have soccer? Sometimes I hated God and His plans for my life, because sometimes God was a loser. His plans sucked.