[dblref]

Well, this past week wasn't one of my better weeks as an official. Did a couple of CYO rec games (B-15) last Sunday. During the 2nd game, the backside of my left knee started to feel just a little tight -- sort of like a pulled muscle. Had a doubleheader on Tuesday (JVG/VG) and during the 2nd half of the VG game, I had a real difficult time running and in fact, my partners finished the last 4-minutes as a 2-whistle crew. It was all I could do to walk to my car and when I woke up Wednesday, my knee was about twice its normal size and I could barely walk. Went to orthopedic doc on Thursday, he took some x-rays and said that I strained some tendons. Told me no running for 3-4 weeks, gave me an inflamatory prescription, wrapped the knee in an ace bandage and gave me a knee brace to use when the swelling goes down.

The scariest part of the whole deal is when he was going over the x-rays with me, he said that at my age (I'm 61), if I don't cut down on the number of games that I do, I might be looking at a knee replacement in 7 or 8 years. I'm just about bone-on-bone in some places and there are a couple of small bone spurs floating around. I think a lot of this was caused by 24 years of being a soccer ref. My wife is always raising cain at me about the number of games I do and wants me to cut back. As an aside, I was channel surfing the other night and saw something about one of the NBA guys being 67 years old. My officiating right now is down to doing the clock this Tuesday for a BV/GV doubleheader. If using the knee brace and cutting down on the games doesn't do the trick, he said he might have to scope it.