My third concussion overall happened about a month and a half after September 11, 2001 when I was fifteen.

I was trying to find my geography book by checking my desks in first and third period, then checking my locker. The teacher had said to hurry back so I wasn’t marked as “late,” and the hallways were getting to be eerily empty in that way that precedes the tardy bell. So I ran.

First off, I hadn’t been able to find my textbook. So I was mad at myself and super anxious about being late. I’m never late. I’m one of those weirdos who gets to the movie theater a half hour early so I can get premium seats and just pass the time by playing pinball or Bejeweled on my phone.

Secondly, I had to go down a flight of stairs and around a corner to get to the geography/yearbook room, and time was running out. So I was sprinting.

Thirdly, I was wearing combat boots and running on slick tile flooring.

You can see where this is going.

My feet slipped with about fifteen steps to go down the staircase, and I caught the railing. However… My hands were sweaty, and the railing was stainless steel, so my grip was like a toddler’s. I smacked my arm on one of the squared metal pegs that jutted out three inches above the middle of the rail, and my hand slipped off. I fell ass over teakettle down the last ten steps, landed on my back, and smacked my head on the floor. After hanging out on my back for a second and saying, out loud, the line Trinity said in The Matrix (“Get up, Trinity. Just get up. Get. Up.”) after she dive-bombed through a window and fell down some stairs—also hitting the back of her head, I blacked out.

(Watching that scene again, her landing looks exactly like mine—thunk goes her head)

I don’t remember how I got up at all—I just popped back into awareness about five feet from the classroom door and realized that I couldn’t bend my left knee at all.

I beat the bell, at least.

I was in a bit of a daze when I sat at my desk and looked at my knee to see why it hurt so much. I saw a tear in the pant leg of my overalls. There was a bloody cut on my knee.

Mrs. Gallitz, the geography teacher, was even more worried when I told her I fell down the stairs because her husband did the same thing just a few days prior and dislocated his shoulder.

I ended up going to the nurse (she gave me a bandaid for the cut on my knee and told me to go wash the wound and get back to class) and the fact that I almost tore my ACL kind of trumped the whole: “I blacked out for an indeterminate amount of time and now I’m nauseous and shaky” thing. The head injury wasn’t even addressed. I don’t even remember if I told anyone that I also hit my head. As a student athlete, I was mostly worried about my busted knee.

My kneecap hit the edge of a couple steps hard enough to tear my denim overalls. When I checked myself in the restroom the nurse told me to go to, I had bone-deep bruises on my left arm where the posts between the staircase railing hit me.

(Side note: we never had actual nurses at school—the most they ever did was hand out bandaids, make you lie down for a while, or give you ice. I don’t remember if she gave me ice for any of my injuries, but I do remember she could not have cared less that a student was hurt after falling down the stairs and she barely even looked at me.)

Like I said, because I played lacrosse, the nearly-torn ACL worried me a lot more than the headache did. I was in a leg brace for about six weeks and had worsening pain for years until I found a physical therapist who suggested platelet-rich plasma therapy after I started my master’s program in forensic psychology. I was on crutches in class after PRP therapy.

PRP was done by taking plasma from my blood and directly injecting that plasma beneath my kneecap. I did PRP therapy twice and I haven’t had serious knee pain since 2012.

With how painful a bum knee is, I think I forgot about the fact that I smacked my head on the floor, too. It’s easier for me to forget a headache than the shooting pain from my knee to my lower back.