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It was Saturday, April 23, the day of the long awaited grad bash held at Universal Studios Orlando. Universal closes the park for all guests apart from graduating high school seniors from 7pm to 3am. We arrived at school at 2:30 pm to prepare to leave at 3. As we walked in Mrs. Lawrence was in prime form chastising kids for their dress code violations. We walked inside the gym and waited for the buses to arrive at the school. The three charter buses arrived and kids funneled into the buses and found seats next to their closest friends. The 25 mile ride took about 35 minutes by bus to arrive at Universal around 3:45pm.

When we arrived the park was still open to the normal guests so all the seniors at the park for grad bash were herded into the pre party zone located at the citywalk clubs. The clubs were all open to entertain the kids, as well as multiple buffets open to fed the starving monsters that filled city walk. The park was to open for seniors at 7pm and the students all starting to pile up at the only exit security was letting people out of. The mass sea of people started to anger at the claustrophobia that was engulfing the visitors. People were just anxious to get out of that disaster. Little did we know the actual disaster was getting ready to begin. When security started trying to let students out of the one exit everyone started pushing to try and get out faster. The stampede started and kids started yelling and getting pushed in all directions trying to get out of the prison of city walk. Once we finally got out of the mass craziness we were herded into Islands of Adventure.

Once we made it to Islands of Adventure my group, consisting of Novia Love, Zachary Spahn, Stephanie Reifschneider, David Purvis, and myself, we decided to hop over to Universal Studios to try and beat the crowds. We made our way to the Mummy roller coaster which an exciting indoor roller coaster and one of the most famous rides at the entire park. The ride takes you through scenes from the movies and almost blasts the rider with fire and touches you with scarab beetles. The wait time was around 30 to 45 minutes and we rode the ride and had a great time. We exited  the Mummy and made our way to check out the most famous and well known area of the park, the Harry Potter themed area Diagon Alley. A dead eye recreation of the description in the books and movies we walked through the moving brick wall to enter Diagon Alley. As soon as we entered, the gigantic dragon perched on top of the Gringotts Bank shot fireballs out of its mouth and screeched extremely loudly. A couple of the members of our group are big Harry Potter fans, including myself, and hadn’t been to the new addition of Diagon Alley. We entered the line, and worked our way through the bank and looked at the different goblins that were working in the bank and the gigantic, beautiful chandelier that hung over the lobby. We worked our way down into the cellers and basement of the bank looking at the moving pictures hanging on the walls and in the newspapers laying on desks on the side. We took our pictures that they would eventually try to sell us in the exit lobby. We worked our way up the stairway and finally onto the ride. We rode the ride and left the bank and made our way to the King’s Cross Train Station (Now you can board the Hogwarts™ Express* and travel between both Hogsmeade™ Station in Universal’s Islands of Adventure^® and King’s Cross Station in Universal Studios Florida^®)  where we would ride the train over to Hogsmeade and see the other Harry Potter themed area. “Explore the mysteries of Hogwarts™ castle, visit the shops of Hogsmeade™ and experience pulse-pounding rides and attractions that transport you into a world of magical thrills and excitement. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter™ – Hogsmeade™ is located inside Universal’s Islands of Adventure^® theme park.” Afterwards we decided to ride Dueling Dragons which was awesome not only because it is a great ride but also because we pretty much walked directly onto the ride with pretty much no wait. We rode both the fire dragon and the ice dragon with a total wait time of about ten minutes. We greatly enjoyed these rides and then decided we wanted to visit the Marvel superhero landing and ride the Doctor Doom and Spiderman rides. We rode Doctor Doom, a launch tower in which we sit on these benches and they launch up a tower and then fall down and launch back up a few more times. After that we made our way over to spider man the ride in which you get inside a cart with a pair of 3d glasses and ride through and watch a fight between spider man and a multitude of his famous villains including Doctor Octopus and Electro. After this it was time to make our way back to the park exits and towards our buses for the ride home. The same mass of people from the pre party translated itself toward the park exits instilling in me a panic and anger that I was never going to leave the damn park. It was 3am in the morning, I was tired, and sick and my voice was gone. I just wanted to get out of the park, get on the bus and sleep until we got back home. I finally created a train of my group and we plowed our way to the stairs, walked down them, and found our bus. We were the last students to board the bus and we only had to wait for guess who, Mrs. Lawrence. A bus driver had to break up a fight between two other random bus drivers and finally we left and made our way back to the school. Surprisingly we were one of the most well behaved school at the entire grad bash.

Today I am going to tell you the complete story of how I tore my ACL and the long and rigorous process to rehabilitate it back to full health. The year was 2013, the Junior Varsity Football season had just concluded and the Varsity team was making call ups to some deserving Junior varsity players to join the Varsity squad for the final two games of the season. A week of practice went by and the first game against Edgewater concluded with a loss and led to the final game against Gateway High School. During practice the week before I managed to carve out a starting spot on the punt team. For a Sophomore, I was really surprised and happy to start a varsity game. During the third quarter we went out for a punt, the ball was snapped and I started my sprint downfield. I was the first person down the field in punt coverage and was racing the ball to the returner. Just as he caught the ball I was about five yards from him, he made a cut and raced towards the sideline. I made a cut without breaking down and felt a pop in my left knee and hit the ground in incredible pain. The pain lasted for a minute or two and I was helped off to the sideline. The team doctors came over and examined my knee. They pulled on it and stretched it all the while with me cringing in pain. They told me they didn’t believe there was anything torn and they believed it was just sprained. I limped the rest of the night, but over the course of the next few weeks it started to feel better and the swelling went down and I thought nothing of it. Fast forward a month and a half, it was fourth block, the day before Christmas break and I playing a game of pickup basketball when I went up for a rebound and landed awkwardly on my left leg and felt the same pop I had felt before and realized I had a problem. I very quickly scheduled an MRI. When I walked into the room, the technician handed me a pair of earplugs because the machine is known to be extremely loud. I crawled into a machine that looked like this.Right before he left the room, however he told me not to move because it would mess up the image. I spent the entire thirty minutes paranoid and trying with all my might to prevent any twitch or movement that I wanted to make. A couple weeks later I went into the orthopedics’ office to review the MRI results with the doctor. The results were not good. I had a completely severed ACL, a torn LCL, a partially torn meniscus, and bone bruising around the patella bone and was extremely close to needing a complete knee replacement, but luckily we caught it before I hurt it again. The MRI looked something like this. This meant that I needed surgery to replace my ACL and meniscus. I was understandably nervous about this procedure as I had never had surgery or been medically knocked unconscious before. They tell you that you are not allowed to eat twelve hours before surgery and my surgery was at seven in the morning, so on the day of my surgery I was experiencing the iron triangle of emotions. I was hungry, sleepy, and nervous so it wasn’t the best of mornings for me. They took me back for surgery prep and hooked me up to all the machines and oxygen and put an IV in my right hand. I was all ready and they told me they were going to start pumping the anesthesia through my veins. They asked me to tell them when I started to feel the medicine affect me. I said, “I am starting to..” BOOF! my head hit the pillow and I was out. For the next two hours my orthopedic surgeon worked on my knee. Here is what an ACL surgery looks like. THE FOLLOWING IMAGES ARE GRAPHIC, PLEASE DO NOT LOOK IF YOU DO NOT LIKE IMAGES OF SURGERY OR GORE.

 

 

I awoke from surgery feeling half refreshed, half nauseas, I was wheeled in a wheel chair to my car and wheeled onto the sofa where I spent probably 10 of the next 12 hours asleep with a special ice machine hooked up to my freshly cut up leg.I missed the following two weeks of school as I recovered and slowly worked it back to the point where I could put pressure on my leg and walk on crutches without too much struggle. I was forced to wear a knee brace that looked like this.Now it was time for the rehabilitation stage of recovery. My goal was to be back before the start of the next football season. A successful ACL recovery takes six months to get back into playing shape, which would place me at the end of July about a week before the start of the season. In order to do this I was scheduled to attend physical therapy three times a week in order to gain back my range of motion and strength in my left leg. There were a number of different exercises and stretches that I had to do. I started every session by getting on a stationary bike and getting my heart rate up all the while stretching out my knee. I would do a number of different exercises throughout the session and then at the end I would have to do what is called range of motion exercises which is pretty much bending or straightening my leg to a point it hurts in hope of getting closer to the normal angle of my other leg. Slowly but surely they would work it back to better strength and range of motion. After months of rehab and hard work I had gotten my leg back to strength right at six months and then I got my new sports acl brace and was ready to get back into football without missing any practice time.