Casey, Your Knees Will Not Stop You!

I feel for Casey Neistat, I actually do. According to his latest video: His left knee creaks when he kneels. Presumably it is more noticeable when he runs. So he is concerned that he may never be able to run again.

I gave up running about 2 years ago, at least for long distances, because of multiple injuries suffered over the last 30-ish years. Casey, here is my list of injuries. They are why I feel for you.

1. I shattered my right knee in a silly accident 12 months ago. Stretched the ACL close to tearing. Took 6 months to fully recover, and now I feel it daily. So I know that pain. Condition as of August 2017.

2. Multiple injuries in a freak accident in 2011. Not for the squeamish.

Left arm: Fracture, underside, close to elbow.
Right arm: Wrist strained & cutup from impact with bitumen
Left leg: Knee slashed, looked like needing stitches, instead has largest band-aid
Right leg: Ankle so heavily strained suspected broken. apparently not, yet swollen so bad that it looked like someone had shoved a hard-boiled egg down my leg.
Face: Right side battered, bruised and embedded with bits of bitumen.

3. I broke both arms in a freak bicycle accident in 1992. Took 2 weeks to get out of my hospital because the doctors wanted me to be independent in the bathroom… you get the picture.

4. In 1990-ish I lacerated the rear of my right ankle severely on a metal bike-pedal. Had both pedals replaced with plastic within months. The ankles were strapped to stop movement to stop the continuous bleeding when I walked. Took a few weeks to recover.

5. In 1985, whilst holidaying in Queensland, we visited Wet’n’Wild. It was a lot different back then.
Anyhow, I was ‘travelling’ on a water-ride called the “White Water Rapids of Colorado”. Riders straddled large inner-tubes and endured fast-moving water on a slide that had multiple rock-shaped bumps at corners all along. Half-way-down a bunch of nitwits had joined arms and tubes to form a barrier – for whatever dumb reason. I was the first to hit the barrier. Accounts say my tube went flying over the edge of the slide. I continued the rest of the journey on my knees.
These days those rides have the last 20-metres of the tube in the water when it ends. Back when I did this, the tubes ended ABOVE the water. When I left the tube, I dropped about half-a-metre into the water. My right knee shattered instantly when it hit the bottom of the pool. My grandparents had no idea how bad my injury was. After much-too-much persistence, I was driven to Brisbane hospital … on the day the doctors went on strike. Flown to Canberra. Doctor’s strike started the day I got there. Flown to Adelaide. Doctor’s strike started the day I got there. Back to Murray Bridge hospital whose doctor’s decided my knee was far more important. Was on crutches for part of my last year of High School. Not many people remember it. Thankfully I recovered. The memory of having 8 large syringes of plasma removed my football-sized knee will never disappear. Nor will the beautiful TAA hostesses who treated me like a king in my wheelchair on every flight.

Casey, you are going to be OK.

You continue to inspire every content-creator on Youtube: You have so many abilities that not-running won’t stop you. Oh, and I am 12 years your senior. It hasn’t stopped me. I walk a lot, almost everywhere, and still manage to create content. Just not weekly like you do now.

If my readers haven’t seen Casey’s YouTube video showing his fear of never running again, here it is.