My head is spinning and I'm not sure whether I took the right dosage of Vicodin or not. I'm tired and I want to leave my room, and I wish I could. I try to stumble to the room of my door with my crutches, but I'm not used to using them so frequently. My meniscus surgery kept me incapacitated for a few days, as do most surgeries, but I was comforted with the knowledge that I was going to be able to return to activity in just a few weeks.

I suddenly began to imagine what life would have been like if I had been incapacitated for twice that long, or for months or years. I honestly could not imagine the pain of not being able to return to a sport I loved. I came closer to seeing the pain of the hundreds of kids a year that can never play a sport again.

One of the most agonizing aspects of a serious injury is that there is really no one to blame; it just happens. The pain of this regret can grow and leave an athlete with a sense of loss beyond just the use of a certain body part.

For some cases one's dignity is lost; the illusions of invincibility that so many young athletes possess is destroyed by a season-ending or career-ending injury. A young man in his late teens may undergo a harsh and early lesson in mortality.

The spontaneous nature of injuries brings me to reside on the philosophy that life is short, so enjoy it. I can see now how quickly such a simple concept can escalate.

Truly what we can learn is that an injury takes so much more away than what meets the eye. We must respect such a loss and understand how, regrettably, the athlete copes with his given situation.