Un-Freakin-Believable...

"Hey... what happened to the text messages? I never received an update..."

I have heard this question a lot to day. As you can see from the picture, we had a bit of a problem today... I really only need to tell the story once, so here you go:

The day began at the crack of dawn... 4:15 AM for me, personally. I had a difficult night sleeping with the anticipation of running 13.1 miles.

Chandra, David, and I had planned to meet at 5:05 AM and catch the 5:15 shuttle in front of our hotel to the starting line. Sometimes, good plans just don't go as planned...

After waiting for over 30 minutes for the bus with 50 of our fellow runners, we decided to drive it. The race was less than an hour away... so I ran upstairs, grabbed my car keys, and off we went.

Immediately we were hit with a lot of "race traffic" near the Memorial. This delayed us a bit... so much that we struggled to find a parking space (again, which we hadn't planned on since we were thinking we'd be taking a shuttle). It was now about 6:00 AM... the clock is ticking.

We found one in a field where we thought it was parking lanes for the participants. However, we, along with dozens of others, were mistaken. These "lanes" were actually PVC pipe for a future sprinkler system. We parked there anyway... and felt really bad about it.

We hurriedly walked to the Memorial with hundreds of others. It seemed a bit chaotic to say the least. We found Laura and Matt, but had to make a quick "break" as we needed a pre-race potty stop. Not finding any port-o-potties, we went into First Church, the one at the base of the Memorial that has a huge impact on the race. "Pancakes Pancakes Pancakes!!!"

Well, we couldn't afford to eat any pancakes... we were in a rush. It was now approaching 6:20 and we hadn't even stretched yet.

Chandra and I headed towards our spots, along with dozens of others, but we were blocked by barriers. We rounded the building and again were faced by barriers. Seeing others jump them, we decided this was what we needed to do...

Wrong decision...

As Chandra was hopping over, I was attempting to "carefully" leap over mine. The barriers were a bit taller than I expected... for some reason, my foot got caught and I headed straight downward.

Instead of landing on my head, I instinctively tried to catch myself... well, I caught myself in a big way. As I hit the pavement, I knew I landed badly. A numbing shock went through my entire body. I heard gasps from a group of women sitting nearby. My first reaction was "embarrassment."

If you were standing nearby and saw this happen, you would have witnessed me landing on the curb... with my knee.

As I tried to stand, I noticed my leg wasn't bending... and then I saw it. My left knee...

To say it was deformed would be putting it a tad mildly. Chandra saw it and immediately started saying, "Regan sit down! Regan... don't look at it! Get down!"

All I could do was to lie down behind a pickup truck as others came running to help me. My knee looked as if someone had hit it with a hammer... there was a pit where my kneecap was supposed to be.

That kneecap? It now was residing in my lower thigh. Sorry for the gruesome details, but that's what was going on. As crazy as this sounds, I thought, "Why can't I just stand up and push this back in... I have a race to start." Maybe I was in shock...

I couldn't believe this. I'm lying on the ground under a pickup and listening to the start of the race happening... and I wasn't going to participate.

I looked at Chandra and said, "Just go... don't worry about me." I felt bad that she was going to miss out on her race due to my stupidity. Of course, she wasn't going to leave me.

The next set of events are kind of a blur... We tried using someone's phone and calling my phone because David had it, but no answer. A call went out to 911. The ladies prayed over me. Chandra ran around the building to go find our friends. People constantly walking by and staring at "the man with the deformed knee."

The ambulance arrived and the EMT girl asked me several questions. She said, "You don't look like you're in pain. Are you in shock because that looks very painful." I said I hadn't extended the leg yet so I wasn't sure where the pain would be.

Little did I know that Laura was having a hard time seeing me in this condition. I saw Chandra's watery eyes. Good grief, was I dying? But I guess if the shoes were on the other foot, I'd probably be feeling the exact same way...

They got me into the ambulance, and off to the hospital I went. In my first ever ambulance ride (whoo-hoo!), I was asked even more questions and the pain started to arrive just as we arrived at the hospital - Hello Demerol!

At the hospital, I had a ton of questions and of course I tried to show a little humor from this... "Yes... I didn't do this running IN the race but running TO the race." Then several nurses came in to look at the knee and told me how painful of a recovery I should be expecting... awesome. They were nice enough to turn the TV on for me - which was showing the Marathon. Son-of-a...!!!

A doctor arrived and started feeling around and said that he could feel my kneecap in different places... oh the news was just getting better. X-Rays were taken and it was confirmed - I have 2 kneecaps now. One is in my thigh and the other is someplace else. Probably in my ankle.

My knee was now swollen pretty good. They gave me more Demerol and then discharged me because there was nothing they could do... I need an Orthopedist. My friends took over big-time.

They ferried me to Walgreens to fill my Percocet prescription, bought some pillows for me, and helped pack me up in my hotel room. Laying in the back of a car, I was now ready to go back to Dallas for the 3-hour tour... the 3-hour tour...

I'm now living at Chandra's house. She has put me up (I tried to fight and say I'm fine and I can do this on my own, but she won out), fed me, and pretty much has become an extra appendage to me...

So, how am I really feeling?

Physically, I've got some pain to say the least. It ranges from a 2 to an 8 on a scale of 10... I had a nap this afternoon, so that helped. My ankle has swollen. Oh, and the "best" part is now I'm putting weight on my right leg... the one that has been giving me the recent troubles. I'm on crutches, I have a brace that extends from my upper thigh to my ankle, and my knee is wrapped up very tight.

Emotionally, I'm pretty frustrated/discouraged. I don't have to get into all of that now... I think it's pretty self-explanatory. And I feel stupid... stupid for rushing and not considering I was about to make a dumb mistake.

Tomorrow the plan is to call an Orthopedist. The ER doctor says I will need surgery... guess I can't "wish" my kneecaps to come back together. Hopefully something can happen before noon tomorrow.

I obviously can't drive, and I'm finding that crutches aren't a lot of fun.

My folks are out of town this week... so Chandra is my Florence Nightengale. I'm pretty sure my mom is going to flip when she finds out all of this.