The Specialist's Steel Plate

IT WAS 1970; I was on the football field as a weak-side linebacker. A pass was thrown to the receiver cutting across the middle. I stepped in between the quarterback and the receiver and intercepted the pass. It was a pretty catch too!

I tucked the ball under my arm and was ready to cut back the other way when my cleat got stuck. It didn’t come up out of the mud. As I was preparing to go try to turn and go the other way, I got hit with a cross body block. My cleat still did not come up.

You could hear it across the field when I broke my tibia and my fibula, the two bones in the lower leg. My leg simply snapped in two. I lay on the field broken and unable to help myself. I couldn’t get up, because I had broken these two bones in my right leg.

They came on the field with a stretcher, put me on it, and took me to the emergency room. In the hospital there were two interns who tried to help me and fix my leg. They were obviously still learning. I screamed as they attempted to reconnect and reposition my bones.

Those two interns were hurting me. They were hurting me, thinking they were helping me, because they had a title in front of their name. Titles don’t mean anything when you’re in pain.

When you are suffering, you want someone who knows what they are doing. The interns finally called the orthopedic specialist.

This doctor came in, examined the situation, and then said, “Because of the nature of the break, we just can’t reset this in the normal way. Your bones shattered when they broke.

We’re going to have to do surgery to correct the problem and then we will have to place a steel plate in your leg to hold your bones together.” In other words, to help me, he had to hurt me. This year, I have that same steel plate in my leg, my right leg. If I were to hit my right shin, you’d hear rattling.

I got steel in my right shin that was placed there in 1970 by somebody who knew what he was doing. And because he knew what he was doing, even though he had to hurt me in order to help me, nobody in this building would know that I had a steel plate in my leg unless I told you. I don’t walk like there are steel plates in my leg. I don’t limp when I walk.

In other words, because the specialist took over, the only people who know that one day I was broken are the folk who were there when I got my leg broken. The specialist fixed my leg in such a way that it looks like there was never any pain. When you are restored by a person who knows what he is doing, you will be restored in such a way that no one knows that you ever were broken.