{"id":37331,"date":"2025-11-01T20:01:41","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T20:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-tore-my-achilles-tendon-playing-pickleball-i-slid-into-a-famous-actors-dms-for-advice\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T20:01:41","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T20:01:41","slug":"i-tore-my-achilles-tendon-playing-pickleball-i-slid-into-a-famous-actors-dms-for-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-tore-my-achilles-tendon-playing-pickleball-i-slid-into-a-famous-actors-dms-for-advice\/","title":{"rendered":"I tore my Achilles tendon playing pickleball. I slid into a famous actor&#8217;s DMs for advice."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/68f675ebcc993f9955d08221?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Man resting after surgery\"\/><figcaption>The author tore his Achilles tendon playing pickelball<\/p>\n<p>Courtesy of the author<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>I tore my Achilles tendon while playing pickleball. <\/li>\n<li>I joined a club that includes Klay Thompson and Jayson Tatum, Al Gore, and Brad Pitt.<\/li>\n<li>I reached out to Sterling K. Brown on Instagram and surprisingly he replied with advice. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I heard the pop first. It sounded like a pickleball thwacking off a paddle, precisely what I was intending to do when I exploded from the set position and backpedaled to return our opponent&#039;s smash.<\/p>\n<p>The pain came next. Like I&#039;d been shot in the lower part of my right calf. As I crumpled to the court, the arch of my foot throbbing in pain, I yelled to my doubles partner, &quot;Shooter?!&quot;<\/p>\n<p>He ran over, his face ashen.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;There&#039;s no shooter, dude,&quot; he said calmly, but with concern. &quot;I&#039;m pretty sure that sound came from inside your leg.&quot;<\/p>\n<h2>I had torn my Achilles tendon<\/h2>\n<p>At that moment, there on the cold concrete behind our local high school, I knew deep down that a lifelong fear of mine had just become reality: I had torn my Achilles tendon. Subsequent visits to sports medicine and podiatry experts confirmed my sinking suspicion. I had surgery to repair the injury 11 days later.<\/p>\n<p>This makes me the newest member of an elite association that also includes hoopsters like Klay Thompson and Jayson Tatum, former vice president Al Gore, and actor Brad Pitt. I like to call our gang the Achilles Repair Club.<\/p>\n<p>Affiliation with this supergroup is no joke. Every comrade must grapple with a  six to nine-month recovery. Physical therapy is a must. In my case, I can&#039;t drive until Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n<p>To put it mildly, the Achilles gang is a fellowship I never expected to join.<\/p>\n<h2>It&#039;s been humbling<\/h2>\n<p>This isn&#039;t the first time I&#039;ve found myself in this situation. Over the past five years, I&#039;ve unexpectedly added several other groups to the resume: The Divorce Club, the Single Dad Club, and the Pre-diabetes Club, to name a few.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/68f6766dcc993f9955d08230?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Child drawing on leg cast\"\/><figcaption>The author is a single dad to three daughters.<\/p>\n<p>Courtesy of the author<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The experiences have been a mashup of surreal, frustrating, humbling, and empowering. Every time, I&#039;ve found comfort in seeking out knowledge, sympathy, and kinship.<\/p>\n<p>Take the Divorce Club, for example. Like hundreds of thousands of other Americans, I became a card-carrying member of this one during the pandemic. I thought I&#039;d grow old with my wife; the reality of ending a 17-year marriage left me flummoxed and feeling totally adrift.<\/p>\n<p>Thankfully, a psychologist friend was running a weekly online support group for people like me, and connecting with this ragtag raft of recent divorcees provided the perspective and to get me through.<\/p>\n<p>I joined the Single Dad Club during the same stretch as a solo father to three girls. At first the transition was totally overwhelming; every night I&#039;d ask myself, &quot;How the hell am I going to do this?&quot; A mix of library books and bar nights with buddies in the same boat helped me recognize I wasn&#039;t alone \u2014 and that I was far more capable than I ever understood.<\/p>\n<p>Years later, after a blood test revealed that my A1C levels were escalating, I found myself a rookie in the Pre-diabetes Club, with the welcome gift of a drug named Metformin. This one was a little tougher for me to wrap my head around; no matter how many Google searches I did, no matter how many academic articles I could read, inching closer to diabetes as I hurtled toward 50 felt scary and inexorably tied to my own mortality.<\/p>\n<h2>I DMed an actor for advice<\/h2>\n<p>Fast-forward to my induction into the Achilles Repair Club. The night before my surgery, I lay awake in bed, scrolling the AchillesRupture subreddit and not-so-quietly freaking out about the procedure and what would be my first encounter with general anesthesia.<\/p>\n<p>I remembered how much personal connections had helped me manage unexpected challenges in the past, and remembered reading about how Sterling K. Brown showed up at this year&#039;s Emmy Awards on a knee-scooter after an Achilles injury of his own. So I slid into the actor&#039;s DMs and sent him solidarity and best wishes for the months ahead.<\/p>\n<p>Two days later, while I groggily recuperated on the couch, I received a response.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Sending them right back to you, Matt,&quot; wrote the star of &quot;Paradise, Washington Black,&quot; and &quot;This Is Us.&quot; &quot;The journey is not easy\u2026but it ain&#039;t forever either! Ask for the help that you need (as I tell myself the same thing)!&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Today a printout of this note hangs on the corkboard in my bedroom, a constant inspiration for the months ahead.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/68f673ec5dbc4fd10dab286d?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Instagram dm printout\"\/><figcaption>The author printed out an Instagram DM for motivation.<\/p>\n<p>Courtesy of the author<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Sometimes it seems bizarre to become a card-carrying member of a club you never expected to join. And sometimes, even when you least expect it, feeling like you&#039;re a part of something bigger than yourself is exactly what you need to overcome adversity and slay the day.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The author tore his Achilles tendon playing pickelball Courtesy of the author I tore my Achilles tendon while playing pickleball. I joined a club that includes Klay Thompson and Jayson Tatum, Al Gore, and Brad Pitt. I reached out to Sterling K. Brown on Instagram and surprisingly he replied with advice. I heard the pop [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37332,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-37331","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}