Weekend warriors, that’s what more experienced sports doctors call those men over 40 who want to do it again at the weekend, throw themselves into sporting activities and quickly end up in the emergency room.
I don’t accept that for me. I sustained my injury on a Monday night. In soccer, receiving the ball, turning quickly. And, bang, someone kicks my calf from behind. Lying on the ground I looked for the aggressor, but there was none, the enemy in this case was my body itself. Or I, who had wanted to drive it too fast and at high speed, instead of keeping my magnificent legs properly tempered.
My name is Mickey Beisenherz. In Castrop-Rauxel I am a world star. Elsewhere I have to pay for everything myself. I’m a multimedia (single) general store. Author (Extra3, Jungle Camp), presenter (ZDF, NDR, ProSieben, ntv), podcast host (“Apocalypse and Filter Coffee”), occasional cartoonist. There are things that strike me. Sometimes even upset me. And since the impulse control is constantly jammed, they probably have to get out. My religious symbol is the crosshair. The razor blade is my dance floor. And just now it itches in the feet again.
Warming up before the game and the injury afterwards are like depending on Putin for energy: How naïve you acted only becomes apparent when it really hurts. The calf then quickly looked like an overripe honeydew melon, and from then on the same applied to the strain on the muscles as to the Wendler: better not to appear.
When you’re in your mid-forties, that’s the perfidious thing, you don’t need someone to foul you badly to limp off the field, oh no: your body just falls apart by itself. And so, at the zenith of my beauty, I naturally ask myself the anxious question: Will I change from a Romeo to an Alfa Romeo? Great designed from the outside, but nothing works inside. Or nothing more.
I used to go to the physio, who kneaded me three times and gave me a slap on the bottom, “You can play again in four weeks”. Now Niels, this towering fascia pianist, looks at me worried and gets a second opinion, because it cannot be completely ruled out that a compartment syndrome or even a thrombosis is growing in my bloated calf. Thrombosis! Why don’t I subscribe to “The Golden Leaf” right away and write down illegal parkers?
It’s easy to become humble. On Monday evening I still thought I was back on the pitch after two weeks. Before I was referred to the second doctor, I already saw myself as one of those poor devils who, after an actually harmless sports injury, suddenly suffered without a lower leg from page 8 of “Bild”, if not because of the malaise itself, then definitely because of hospital germs.
“Disgusting author accuses: botch doctor is to blame for shrinkage thighs!”
Pity about the calf.
It turned out differently. After the recommended second doctor drew a glass of wheat beer blood from my calf with a syringe, the diagnosis was a torn muscle bundle. So I’m sitting at 40 degrees with red compression stockings at Hamburg’s most popular bathing spot, but I’m not even allowed to jump into the water. house arrest feelings. I’m the outdoor version of Jimmy Stewart in “The Courtyard Window”. Life rages around me. Young people climb over fences to the coveted footbridges, hold up soccer balls or dance on the slackline. Compared to the latter, a bandaged leg is at least the more dignified alternative.
Again and again the thoughts: Is this the gradual end of my sporting career? The beginning of decay? Am I old enough for the CDU? My slipped disc from 2002 always helps me as a mental crutch. Want to say: Anyone who was so broken at such a young age does not have to blame a new injury on old age. I’ve always been defective, yay! Tomorrow I’ll get a pair of binoculars, put my foot up and see what the neighbors are up to.
