Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Andrei Markov is back with the Montreal Canadiens, almost two months ahead of schedule, after suffering a serious injury on the opening night of the season.

Which is great news for me, as I picked him up off waivers about a week ago in my fantasy league.

Injuries are part of the territory when one is a professional athlete.  Whether they are career threatening injuries, or just a nagging niggling day-to-day ailment, sports fans often forget that these guys aren’t video game characters, they are flesh-and-blood.

The human body, even a well-tuned body, still requires proper rest and care in order to recuperate from a physical set-back.

The time-table for an athlete to return-to-action varies by person, but suffice-to-say there is no magic sponge that is waved over the player, and he miraculously climbs out-of-bed and gets back on the ice or field, despite evidence to the contrary every four years in the World Cup.

The body is a complicated machine.  It requires proper maintenance, and, if necessary, repairs, like any other finely tuned machine.

Yet most of us gloss over those blood-and-guts details when scanning the IR list of our favourite team.  How long until Player X is back from that anterior ligament exterior alleviated pulled muscle thingy?

I’m no different, possibly in part due to the luck of never having broken or sprained anything during my brief athletic career.  There was that one time during high school football that my brand new cleats caused two huge red raw popped blisters on both of my heels, which meant much pain when doing something as simple as walking, but that only lasted about half-a-week.

Sports injuries remained, for me, a mere nuisance, particularly when managing my fantasy teams…until this past Christmas Night at 10:30 pm.

That was the exact moment when all the adults up in the living room at our house heard a series of high-pitched screams emanating from the basement.

The boys said they were just playing Xbox, but for some reason, my five-year-old decided it was a good time to launch a body slam at the visiting 10-year-old, who responded with evasive action that led to my boy tumbling head-over-heels into the thinly-carpeted, unforgiving concrete floor, and landing square on his right arm.

Which caused both bones to snap, between the wrist and the elbow.

Which led to those screams of pain, and Mommy running down the stairs in record time.

Which led to a premature end to the Christmas Day festivities, and a hasty visit to the Emergency Room at Toronto East General Hospital.

We got lucky here, as when the three of us strolled in, the three admitting nurses were sitting around chatting, maybe exchanging Christmas war stories.  A scant twenty minutes later, the place began to fill up with the walking wounded.

My son was attended to right away, and after being weighed, he was prepped for the doctor.

Canada comes under criticism, including here at home, about the inadequacies of our public health system, but I’ve always maintained that while we may indeed have long waiting lines at hospitals in this country, as least we have lines.  A quick glance at the sheet of fees posted in the admitting room indicated that a mere visit would set one back in excess of four hundred dollars, if not for OHIP (our public health plan in the province of Ontario), wonky and imperfect as it may be.

My son was in a lot of pain as the nurses prepared a sling for his injured wing.  The three of us waited for about an hour as the doctors dealt with much more urgent matters.

A room came open around 2:00 am.  The boy was wheeled in, and was prepped for the procedure to realign the two broken bones, as Dr. Isaac Moss wanted to avoid surgery if at all possible.

The calculation for how much drugs had to be administered was off , which led to my son being unfortunately awake for the first part of the procedure, which meant he was in a heck of a lot of pain, until they rectified the situation, after no doubt feeling the hot darts emanating from my wife’s eyes

My boy didn’t do himself any favours, thanks to a stubbornness inherited from his mother; he fought the effects of the drug, all the while imploring Mommy to take him home.

Eventually, a cast was applied to his right arm, and we now begin at least a six-week journey of doctor appointments, and therapy, hopefully ending with my kid’s right arm as good as new.

There will be no rushing of this process.

Which only leads me to shake my head when I think of pro athletes who suffer similar and often far worse, injuries, yet are back playing well before initially projected.

Once upon a time, and no doubt even now, players were purposely rushed back, as the old-school mentality (that should be NO-school mentality) believed that one should play through pain, and injuries, and such things as having one’s bell rung.

That outdated thinking is slowly becoming exactly that in the sports world, outdated, though there are still holdouts hiding in the caves of ignorance, the same caves that are full of folk who blame the victim for incidents such as hits-from-behind.

Even with the best medical care that money can buy, I’m still amazed that someone such as Markov is back-on-the-ice way ahead of schedule, and except for the extra pounds he gained from shoving back those great hot dogs they make in Montreal, he’s back to his usual All-Star form.

The good Doctor told us that a kid my son’s age stands a much better chance of having his bones repair themselves fully without surgery, as opposed to adults.  He will still have to put up with the major inconvenience of that cast until around Valentine’s Day, yet Markov is back out there, playing hockey at the highest level, almost two months ahead of schedule.  Sure, medicine is an inexact science, but two months early?

No, he didn’t break a bone, but the injury he incurred opening night against the Maple Leafs, a lacerated ankle injury, after a collision with goaltender Carey Price’s skate, could have ended Markov’s career.

Instead, he returns early, scoring two goals that first game back.

I don’t care how tough these guys are, that injury had to hurt.

My son has had a difficult time falling asleep the first few nights since the accident.  His cast gets in the way of sleeping, and his arm has to be elevated in order to reduce swelling.  It’s not a lot of fun.  Injuries hurt.

Something to keep in mind the next time you’re apt to complain about a player on your team taking his good ole’ time returning to action after suffering an injury.

Life ain’t a video game.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s