While the world was marveling at the birth of new intelligence, I was learning the primitive language of my own body’s collapse. The past year, celebrated by my peers as a triumphant one for artificial intelligence, was for me a descent into a quiet, personal hell. It began, as many profound shifts do, with a moment I barely registered—a turning point I see now was less a pivot and more a fracture.
I’m writing this from my bed, two weeks after a three-hour surgery that left my ankle peppered with four arthroscopic ports, a long open incision, and a new, unwelcome hole in my iliac crest. I rarely share personal matters on twitter, the digital town squares that we use for celebrating career milestones and promoting new work. But the solidarity I found in the quiet, offline conversations with friends and colleagues—in their own stories of battling physical trauma—convinced me that vulnerability has its own value. This is my story, in case it might help someone else find their footing.
Note: The content of this article was polished and refined with the help of LLM.
The timeline begins last July. I had just moved to New York City, my Ph.D. defended, the city’s electric promise laid out before me. But the promise soured. My girlfriend of five years, a woman who had been my family in America, ended our relationship because her parents disapproved. The heartbreak was a physical thing, a weight that settled in my chest and stole my sleep. I cried in a bar with a friend.
The next day I went to play soccer. I never drink the day before a game, but that night, I was desperate for the familiar release, a way to exorcise the gloom. My luck ran out. A bad sprain, a sound I’d never heard before, and the immediate, searing inability to bear weight. The pain was so sharp it stole my breath. Yet, I told myself it was just another sports injury, a temporary setback. I couldn’t have imagined it would sideline me from the life I knew for over a year, perhaps forever.
A CT scan the next day led me to a surgeon at the prestigious Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS). "A non-displaced, age-indeterminate fracture," he said. No surgery needed. He fitted me for a CAM boot, prescribed non-weight bearing, and sent me on my way.
“My calf hurts,” I told him. It was a strange, cramping pain, distinct from the ankle. I worried about blood clots and asked for an ultrasound. He glanced at me. "You're young and healthy," he said, a casual dismissal before he left the room. I felt a wave of relief. I trusted him. I even flew to a SIGGRAPH in Denver to present our paper, hobbling on crutches, my ankle and calf throbbing in protest.
At SIGGRAPH '24 in Denver, hobbling around on crutches with painkillers for my ankle and calf. At the time, I still believed it was just a temporary setback.
Four weeks later, I returned for a follow-up. The doctor didn’t appear; his physician's assistant saw me instead. She declared my ligaments "tight" and told me to start walking and begin physical therapy. I complained again about the cramping calf. This time, she relented and ordered the ultrasound.
The results were immediate and terrifying. My entire left calf was riddled with Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT). "This is a life-threatening condition," the radiologist told me, his voice grave. I couldn't believe I had flown with it. I was put on blood thinners, a three-month sentence that felt like a betrayal from my own body. I, who ran and played soccer four or five times a week, was now officially "unhealthy."
By November, a vascular surgeon at Weill Cornell delivered more grim news. Some clots had dissolved, but others had turned chronic, permanently sealing two of the six major veins in my calf. "You'll have to live with it," she said.
My ankle wasn't healing either. A limited range of motion, a feeling of being "stuck," and a sharp weakness persisted. I went back to my original HSS surgeon. He didn't bother to examine me. Instead, he offered a platitude. "You're seeing the glass as half-empty," he chided, a bizarre response to my chronic pain. He insisted I was fine. I begged for an MRI. He resisted, claiming it wouldn't change his opinion, but finally, begrudgingly, he wrote the order.
The report was a litany of everything I feared: torn ligaments, including the ATFL and deltoid, and the two words that sent a cold dread through me: "high-grade cartilage injury." I knew nothing about cartilage, but a quick search confirmed my panic. It doesn’t heal. When I called his office, he didn’t call back. He left a cold, terse message in my patient portal: Cartilage injury is expected. No surgery needed. You can return to sports with a brace. I chose, once more, to believe him.
By February, the pain had worsened. Even my daily commute was an ordeal. I decided to seek other opinions. A second HSS surgeon, a cartilage specialist, took one look at my scans and performed a quick physical test. "Your ankle is unstable," he said bluntly. "And the cartilage damage is a full-thickness defect. It will only get worse." He proposed a complex surgery: ligament reconstruction, plus a cartilage procedure using BioCartilage and a bone marrow graft from my hip.
I broke down in his office. His prognosis was the polar opposite of everything I had been told for months. The first surgeon, when confronted, suddenly changed his tune and agreed with the surgical plan. I was furious. I had trusted him, and his delay had not only allowed my cartilage to deteriorate but had also led to the permanent damage from the DVT.
The next three months were a blur. I had a second job: a part-time medical researcher, a student of my own anatomy. I spent my evenings reading academic papers and my spare daytime trekking to appointments across the city. The journey was traumatizing. Every surgeon offered a different opinion—on the source of the pain, on the specific procedures, on whether to remove a bone fragment or reattach it. I felt a profound sense of helplessness, adrift in a sea of expert contradictions. The online support groups I joined were a double-edged sword: a source of community, but also a gallery of failed surgeries and chronic pain. The sky turned a permanent, bruised gray. I felt like I was crawling through an endless tunnel with no light.