Third Degree, On What Scale?

When the doctor looked over his glasses, standing at the foot of my bed, just after he gingerly placed my foot back down on the bed, my knees still up, he said, “This is what we call a 3rd Degree ACL/MCL Tear.”

Alta, Utah

“Oh,” I said. And for a brief moment, I believed, there was a scale of 1-10, and I was far down, close to three. “What’s the worst?”

There was s pause, and the resident intern at my side dropped her head as the Doctor said, “There is no number higher than a three. All of your ligaments and nerve tissues are gone, and that is why you have no pain.”

Surgery to follow….