Are Sports Injuries justified?
Are Sports Injuries justified?
The simple answer is NO.
Could they be prevented?
The answer is Yes and No.
Why?
We never find perfect gentlemen/ladies playing it by the rules.
What is my resolve/or reaction?
It is always guarded optimism but in reality never achieved.
I have had two injuries related to hockey.
One related to long jump and hop step and jump (most likely, trying to jump to the pit prepared for the seniors, being myself a junior and landing on the hard surface instead of the sand).
I have had few injuries on my knee top but the one I hated was the boil that followed and the traditional treatment my father planted on it.
Boiled rice and salt.
This is well before Mercurochrome and Flavin were available.
That treatment was horrible and I vowed myself not to get injured again in my life.
Fortunately we had very smart family doctor who used to give a thumping jab of penicillin over ethyl chloral spray.
If not for the penicillin I could have been a non entity by teen.
Such was the status of medical care then.
Why did I did not write this before?
For over a month, I stood fast and watched others pain in the comfort of my bedroom.
That is something I never enjoyed for 40 years.
Now after a month of soccer, I cannot drop to sleep.
I was a sports addict and TV addict (TVs were not here in Sri-Lanka) in UK.
What I enjoyed most was snooker and billiards and I was good enough to beat all my mates in UK.
One condition (it was a ploy) I request from my employer in UK always was is there a snooker table within reach of the hospital or within itself.
That tricks the panel and I get the job beating over 60 odd candidates with similar potential.
They used to asked where this brat has learned this game which is typical British.
I tell them, that I played billiard from childhood.
Which is a big lie and I had two more other lies one on chocolates and one on coca cola for the nurses.
And no more lies during the entire period abroad.
They hate lies.
If any of my former employers read this, please do not castrate me now.
I learned it from the marker at the University Club before that in the Faculty with trial an error basis.At Digana when it was height of JVP activity in 88-89, I could play only snooker/billiard and squash (I was hopeless in both Tennis and Squash).
We used to play well pass midnight (no patients and no entertainment with blackouts elsewhere) and I was the first to start generators in every private hospital I worked since then.
Thank god, I was working with foreign principles and they were here to launch our first satellite which southern insurgency ruined for good.
I wanted to start some worthwhile academic writing and was looking for a set of typewritten notes I made before we had the first 486 computer in the university.
Quite by accident I found an article from BMJ (I only subscribe to Linux magazine and rarely read medical journals, except the digital NEJM, occasionally) related to sports and boxing.
I have reproduce the data which was 20 years old;
I was astonished to find they have introduced boxing in schools.
It is stupidity at the highest level.
I do not mind BBS monks practicing boxing among themselves and ruin their own brains instead of the “dayakayas”.
One of my mothers (maternal) uncles died in rugby and the British banned it then in schools.
My mother and especially my father were averse to me taking part in any sports and all my sports honours were secretly achieved.
All the same I knew the correct balance.
I enjoyed sports but any accolade were little bonus to my emerging ego.
Now the facts.
1. Number one for fatal accidents (death) is riding a horse.
Accidents exceed motor racing.
Less strains, sprains, dislocations and fractures.
But I have seen ruptured spleen with the horse kicking the rider.
But would not even mount an elephant (just the respect for this majestic beast), never mind, not in my life a horse.
I prefer, watching them racing in a racing track and be the doctor in attendance (no betting allowed) for the jockeys and sign their books for a small fee.
That is high fun.
2. Number two is boxing (there is always irreversible and accumulating injuries that culminate in dementia).
(read my blog piece "Is boxing injuries justified."
3. Number three is Rugger.
4. Number 4 is martial arts.
5. Number five is soccer
6. Hockey my favorite is number six (I have had one injury as an adult, that was due to a guy who never played hockey before hit my shin).
Never in my life I have hit a guy with my stick intentionally but this guy's fingers were squashed by me with a single sharp trick we use to warn the bad guys on field.
He never came again to play.
Of course I have broken the front set of teeth of a non academic staff member unintentionally and he never returned but was duly referred to Dental School at Dangolla.
Then there was a beautiful burger lady who attracted (including the two guys mentioned above), the undesirables when keeping goal, as a reserve.
I was not a saint when I was young and in competitive sports.
It was true to most of us.
But there was no criminal intent.
She only had one go at her solar plexus with a tone down strait from my stick, the ball landing on the middle of her chest (if my aim was bit to the right or left it would have been disaster for her bulging breasts) and we practiced uninterrupted for the rest of the season and we emerged as the champions beating Colombo, in a penalty shoot out.
She never came agian for hockey.
I thank god for that!
I think my download of Bodhi Linux is finishing and I am feeling sleepy and next installment will come when I wake up again.
Mind you cricket comes last.
