Offaly’s Paraic Sullivan reveals the anxiety of mentally preparing for another ACL operation

Any surgery,no matter how small, is a big deal.

No one likes going into hospital and it's hard to be positive when your health is in the hands of someone you don't even know. It must be especially tough for sportspeople, who place their trust in surgeons to make sure that everything will be put right in their bodies once again when they wake up from the anesthetic, so they can perform again at the highest level. Fear and anxiety are just two of the emotions expressed by Offaly's Paraic Sullivan who's in the early stages of recovering from surgery to repair a second ACL injury. The player got hurt in April and is describing his recovery in an ongoing blog 'onlytwiceplease' that we've featured here before In his latest post the midfielder describes how he tried to block out thoughts of going under the knife in the days and hours coming up to the operation,

'From the night of the injury to the edgy wait to find the results and all the hard grinding of pre-hab and conditioning, the inevitable surgery now awaited. Somehow I managed to give this huge event no headspace at all. I saw the pre-hab work as the LIMBO stage and I was just working up to this point, yet I never thought once about the implications of the surgery.' 'I can’t for the life of me fathom why I just boxed away this major forthcoming event. Maybe I was scared? Maybe I felt it was pointless thinking about it? Regardless, on the eve of the surgery I was in the hall in Rhode doing a belter of a weights session. I knew I wouldn’t be able to see the inside of a gym for a while so I suppose this was me saying it might be a while, but I will be back.'

Knee few hours post surgery and 4 days later! No boundaries,YOU chose YOUR path https://t.co/gkvSyU0J7a #acl #believe pic.twitter.com/npSZ1ukEKf

— Paraic Sullivan (@SullivanParaic) May 8, 2015

The Rhode man underwent surgery just over two weeks ago and describes the emotions he tries to project as well as contain as he gets ready to go under the knife in Santry once again

'When I reached Santry I said to myself I was going to be incredibly positive and feed off my own personal good vibes. I wanted people to remark how focused and settled on the task on hand I was. That would help. A lot of procedures and formalities dominated my day. After checking in at ten I was informed that I would be operated on at twenty past one. I read a little and got dressed into the sexy paper underpants and backless gown. I was ready.'

ACL surgery normally takes a number of hours as the medical team attempt to reconstruct the knee to proper working order. Muscle,ligaments and bone must all be cleared and cleaned in order to allow the patient the best possible recovery. When Sullivan wakes up he realises why he has gone to such lengths to try and forget about surgery and the implications of a knee reconstruction

I woke absolutely crippled with pain. I was extremely groggy but still I felt severe pain. Now it dawned on me, why I had blanked out the surgery. It was very evident now. My subconscious had sneakily helped hide them memories of the last surgery. No need to sieve through the internal memory bank, as my body was sending alarm bells to my brain. As I was given the dosage of morphine the pain goes down slightly and I can think straight, for a while. More procedures follow and I have to wait until my pain level reaches below three to be brought back to my suite. I lie; I am at one or two. I just wanted to go back to my room. Maybe someone might be there that would chat me, plus I was ravenous and would have eaten literally anything at that stage after all the fasting.

 

Hours of mundane work but each minute that passes is a minute closer to playing http://t.co/Pd7PSjLklV #acl #daybyday pic.twitter.com/4OuzOgry7P — Paraic Sullivan (@SullivanParaic) May 5, 2015

After hardly getting any sleep due to a fellow patient's snoring, Sullivan wakes in the morning  realisng that his knee injury may not be so bad in comparison to the troubles of other sportsmen. The case of Corkman Jamie Wall comes to his mind as does the accident that befell famous Offaly footballer Matt Connor,

'A long night finally over, one of many ahead but one down. One closer to playing. That line is the most over used line ever in my brain but it is the fuel to keeping me positive. I think of people like Jaime Wall and Matt Connor, these people struck by tragedy and I count myself a very lucky individual. At the end of the day, sport is sport. Life is life. Separating these things is vital. That has to come into play. Without perspective we lose focus in everything we do. Sometimes I think tragedies come as a lesson to us all. To value what is around us. We all know the abundance of clichés that people use in regards to perspective and life. Every day now I try to put this perspective into place. That really helps.'

You can read the full blog post here