Knee Replacement 20: Not So Fast

Pop is not a sound that a guy with two new knee replacements wants to hear while he’s skiing down the hill. Nor is crack. But whatever the sound is that combines these two, that’s what I heard. And then I was on the snow. In pain. Sliding.

It had been 172 days since the surgery on my left knee. That’s 5.7 months, and I’d been given the green light to ski by my doctor six weeks before, as long as I took it easy and stuck to groomed runs.

At the time, it was snowing in Utah, and though we were behind in our snowfall total, the slopes were soft, and the situation was not yet dire. By January, the situation had fallen into the category of dire and World Cup Mogul event organizers had moved an event from Deer Valley to Waterville Valley, New Hampshire. There’s not enough snow in Utah, so we’re going to New Hampshire where there is snow?

The world gets stranger and stranger.

I’d traveled back East to do some research for a film I’m working on, and skied without incident for four days, gently and delicately, on icy, foggy, rainy, and snowy slopes.

Back at home, it’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day, with a clear blue sky, light wind, and the beguiling Wasatch beckoning. There’s no way I’m staying home.

Snowbird’s Mineral Basin is beautiful, and as I’m skiing on the more mellow of the two chairlifts, it’s a ski-on chair. Descending a rolling meadow with a little more speed and confidence on each run, I’m finally starting to feel my skis again, starting to feel like myself.

The plan had been to meet my son, Liam, but the timing hadn’t worked out, and when ski patrol closed Mineral Basin, I called him from the top of the bowl and made plans to meet at the bottom of Alta. Now he was driving his truck over to pick me up and bring me back to Snowbird, where I’m already envisioning having a cold beverage while sitting in the sun on the tailgate of my truck, one of my favorite pastimes. I am always at peace in this moment; the world feels like it just might turn out all right.

But first, I have to ski down Alta. Gliding through the East Baldy Traverse, I wrap around and through Lower Ballroom, Main Street, Meadow, and Mambo before stopping and under the Collins Chairlift. I’ve never been one for trail names—twenty-five years of skiing this hill, and I still don’t know the names of most trails—and I always just think of this gash in the mountain as the Gut. I’ve called this area other things, but none that I will repeat here.

This is, by far, the worst section of the Alta Ski Resort. Always crowded and usually icy, especially at the end of the day, I will often cut way over, past the Wildcat Chairlift, to avoid it. But today, that’s not an option. It’s bumped and rocky over there, and I’m supposed to stay on groomers, so that’s what I will do. I have two options: the blue-square Corkscrew run, which is wall-to-wall people navigating an icy sheet, or the steeper, more direct Nina’s run, which is a also a hockey rink, but has far fewer skiers. I wait for a gap in the crowd and push off. Not bothering to try to engage my edges on the skating rink surface, I’m riding sideways down the hill in a high-speed slip. This is usually a safe, low-drama move.

The pop/crack let me know that today it would involve some unexpected drama. And then I was on my hip, sliding down, picking up speed. Pushing my downhill ski into the ice, I’m shaving off great torrents of crystals, covering myself with snow-cone chips, until I come to a stop.

I’m able to stand, but when I put weight on my left leg, it collapses, and I fall again, sliding down some more. I look up the hill. This is not a place where you want to be lying on the slope. Locals and tourists alike treat it like a speed trap, straight-lining heroically in the vain hopes that someone down at Goldminers will notice their studly acceleration. They’re usually on the heels and couldn’t turn if they had to avoid a barn. I was a fallen cow. I managed to stand again, all on my right, downhill ski, and steer to the edge of the trail.

I stand there for a minute, wondering how I’m going to avoid finishing this run in a ski patrol sled. That’s when my phone rings, and I pick up to hear my son’s voice: Is that you on the side of the run?

Yeah.

Are you okay?

No.

I’ll come up.

As Liam starts running up from the parking lot, I start sliding down, maintaining my balance by standing on my downhill edge and repeatedly sticking my uphill pole into the ice to keep me upright. It’s a slow go, and because I can’t put weight on my left leg or hold it up above the snow, it’s dragging painfully.

Liam arrives and tries to steady me as I sideslip down. It doesn’t work, and I almost catch his snow boots and fall again. He mentions ski patrol, and I just grow. A half hour later, I’ve covered the few hundred yards to the parking lot, and Liam is pulling a folding chair out of the back of the truck, setting it up on the tarmac. The scream that comes out of my mouth as I try to lower myself into the chair attracts the attention of a mid-50s man who introduced himself as a doctor from Duke University.

Together with Liam, they get my ski off and help me into the truck’s front seat. For my part, I’m accompanying their ministrations with a great deal of falsetto whimpering, punctuated occasionally by some primal growling. This thing really hurts.

I think I know what it is, says the Doctor from Duke.

He holds his hand over my knees.

Do you mind? He asks.

I tell him to go ahead and examine all he wants.

As he prods and squeezes my left knee, which is already the size of a cantaloupe, I tell him about my recent double knee replacement. He asks who’d done it, and I mention Dr. Eric Heiden.

Well, you’ve got one of the best in the West, says the Doctor from Duke. But I’m afraid I’ve got bad news. You’ve either ruptured your patella tendon or quadriceps tendon. Neither one is good. There’s nothing holding that kneecap in place… But Eric Heiden will fix you up.

We thank him, and Liam drives out of the Collins parking lot and down the hill toward Snowbird. On the drive, I call Heiden’s answering service and tell the attendant my story of woe. Twenty minutes later, back at my truck, Dr. Heiden calls back. Fast service for a holiday.

So, I was on this groomer at the bottom of Alta, I started.

You’re saying you were skiing and had a crash?

I was skiing, something popped, and I had a crash.

Tell him what the other doctor said, Liam whispers.

I do, and Dr. Heiden says we’d better get you in tomorrow, which they do, and then I’m at his Heber, Utah, office, where the x-rays show that the bottom of my patella has cracked off, taking the tendon with it. In the x-ray, the patella is riding much too high and below, floating in the space of my flesh; a dark void on the x-ray is a Chicklet of bone.

How are we going to get that back together? I ask.

We’re gonna have to MacGyver it, he says, and I laugh, and he carries on, tapping a pen on the X-ray screen as he explains: I can drill some holes in the patella and run sutures through it and the tendon. Pull it up tight. It should be fine.

What are the chances of success?

Very high. You’re healthy, you’re motivated…

Maybe too motivated? Was I going too hard?

Maybe. Maybe not. Could’ve just been bad luck.

So I wasn’t a knucklehead.

Naw, you’re not a knucklehead. See you on Thursday.

And then, as he’s leaving the examination room, he cocks his jaw, and over his shoulder, he says, Knucklehead.