This is the story of the most interesting event I probably ever had in a summer. Two weeks ago, I got the chance to go around town in an ambulance and be the main character out a vacation with friends. For context, here’s how that went:

🍹 A bit of backstory

Approximately three weeks ago, I invited a group of friends to come over to my house so we could all be together and hang out, go to the beach, and have a few days of relaxation before we all went our separate ways to work, school, or whatever else we went to do. It was all planned out so we would have the most amount of time having fun and not worrying about stuff like groceries, sleeping spots and everything, so it stood to be one of the peak events of this summer, at least for me.

It started out really well, everyone was in a perfect mood and the first day was an absolute blast, spending most of the time in my pool, catching up, playing games and much more. At night, we had a great dinner all together and we got all dressed up to go to a nearby club that has become sort of a hotspot during this summer.

Unfortunately, everyone else in the country also though it was a good idea to go to this club, and by the time we got there, the line was more than 2h long! After waiting around for a while and giving it a fair shot, we decided it was simply too much and went for the second best thing: the Casino ♠. It was my first time going to this particular one, and it was a really cool experience. I even walked out with a bit of profit!

After such an action-filled day, the next had everything to be even better. And here, is where the interesting things start to happen.

🚑 Disaster Strikes

After a slow morning in my house just relaxing and doing next to nothing, we hit the road on our way to the beach. I am fortunate to live really close to some really cool beaches, and the one we went to was especially good on this particular day. The sand was only slightly damp but perfect for playing around, the waves were calm and the sun was shining bright. There was only one thing left to do: Draw a football field and get everyone to play ⚽.

After putting on sunscreen and ensuring I was duly protected from skin cancer, I convinced everyone to play and we started the match. I was with my friend and my brother, against three other friends and my girlfriend. To keep them anonymous, let’s call these friends Alice, Bob, and Charlie 👀.

You see, I am not the best player, but I try to give it my all when playing, and that means running until my legs are cramping. And I did a run, trying to get the ball out of Bob, that proved fatal.

As I was running against him, I tried to deviate my leg from the impact, and was successful. Up to a point… Unfortunately for me, my knee slammed straight against his leg, and I suddenly felt something grinding against my bone. I had just dislocated my kneecap.

I looked at my knee in panic, not because of pain (even though there was a lot of it), but because of seeing it in a position where it definitely should not be. I launched myself to the ground, tried to stabilize my leg as much as I could in a comfortable space, and then the panic settled.

I am truly lucky to have friends that are absolute gods in assembling a task force, coordination, and execution. As soon as they noticed I was not actually faking a foul (what everyone initially though), they immediately dialed 112 (Portugal’s Emergency Number), helped me get in a comfortable position and gave me ice for the growing pains, and started running to the read so the firefighters would know here we were. After a few minutes of panic. everything was amazingly under control, and the firefighters had just arrived.

They set my kneecap back into it’s place on-site, and after a few seconds of burning pain, I suddenly felt a lot better. My leg was stabilized, and I was on my way to the hospital. This is were I got my first experience in riding both an ATV (to get me out of the beach), although stabilized in a stretcher, and an Ambulance, where I was distracting myself from the pain by asking a ton of questions on the equipment they had there. I also feel this is the moment to thank the three amazing people that helped me that day. To Luis Silva, Beatriz Moreira, and Miguel Pereira: if you ever find this, I owe you one, big time.

I then made my way to the hospital were I did a few X-rays and had a check-up done by the doctor, where he prescribed me some medication for the pain and a brace to wear for the next three weeks, one which I am currently wearing. By the middle of the afternoon, I was making my way back home, albeit in a bit of limp.

🩹 The Aftermath

The first few days were extremely weird. I couldn’t get my leg to fully bend or fully extend, putting any sort of force on the leg felt awful, and sleeping was strange because I was always thinking of having my leg secure.

After the vacations with my friends ended (we still managed to visit a few places after this incident), I also discovered another aspect I had not foreseen: I was basically incapable of being independent. I needed help cooking, getting stuff, and even basic things like getting dressed were challenging at times. If not for my amazing girlfriend, I would be basically bedridden all day, so she also deserves a massive thanks on my end.

Now, with two weeks having passed, I am feeling much, much better, although some things remain strange. I am pretty sure (and so is the doctor) that I ripped one of the tendons, so surgery is likely due very soon. I will also need rehabilitation afterwards, which will bring on its own set of challenges. But the strangest thing of them all is that, for the foreseeable future, I am incapable of doing any sort of physical activity. For a person that cannot stand still for too long and was fairly active up to this point, suddenly doing nothing but sitting all day was a real shock that I am sill getting used to.

I will try to update this situation as it develops, especially because I think it would be nice to record this for posterity. It was the first time such a thing happened to me or to someone close, so it is a whole new experience that I am facing. Let’s hope I do get something good out of this, and that it is the start of an epic comeback that culminates in me completing an Ironman. That would be a really cool bit of dad lore to tell my kids one day. I will now end this with a small phrase that I saw a guy on YouTube say, but really stuck with me. I decide it is going to be my second favorite quote after Sic Parvis Magna.

Manifest Excellence.

See you on the next one!