Dr. Hawkes’ Peculiar History
as a Doctor
Dr. Hawkes and his family moved from the
He was a
He had his wife working with him in the clinic who was a sweetheart and
both were pretty good people in the church and community. He had a son about my age that was a
promising athlete and wrecked his knee also.
So when I went in with my Patellar Tendonitis at age 17 (having had the
symptoms for over a year now), he was very sympathetic and did anything
immediate to keep me on the football field.
He was probably more interested when he found out I was getting
recruitment letters from the
So for his treatment of Patellar Tendonitis, it consisted of
a series of NSAID (Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug) cortisone shots to
dampen the pain and swelling. There is
no cure for this disease and staying off it isn’t an option. Just like tennis players with “tennis elbow”
keep playing…there are ways to manage the pain.
He was quite liberal with the NSAID shots…2 shots was normal, 3 to 5 was
unheard of, and I received 7 all together (this was learned all in retrospect,
of course). Man they were painful. He was also quite liberal with the pain pills
(which were samples from the cupboard that a drug rep had obviously given
him). Remember, this is before the pain
pill craze was “thought up.” In today’s
world it’s obvious, but in 1994 the ideology of getting high or getting a buzz
off these things wasn’t thought of yet…at least not on a wide spread scale like
it is today (you can’t disregard the ‘70’s thinking they never thought of
it). I thought they hurt my stomach and
didn’t do any good pain-wise and since they were sample drugs he got out of his
clinical room cabinet, I thought they were just “things that might help.” They hurt more than they helped and caused
too much drowsiness in school. Plus
pills don’t fix the problem, they just delay the pain
until after the game.
Then came my senior year, coming off a state championship the year
before (and starting on both sides). I
really needed a strong knee to perform well and prove that the recruitment
letters weren’t a fluke. I was
consistently logging 4.4 seconds for the 40 yard dash which was really the only
thing going for me. I experienced the
“terrible triad” in the 3rd to last game before the season
ended. It was a blown, sweep where the
QB gave the play away on a non-routine audible.
I still made the first down, which counts in the ESPN world of
domination, but I took a helmet to the knee from a spearheading linebacker who
knew the play beforehand. No one’s fault, just the nature of the game. So that was the 1st sport-caused
injury that gave my career the jumpstart I needed to maintain a track record of
bazaar, unwarranted injuries.
So instead of immediate surgery, Dr. Hawkes
had me wait for a month or so for the swelling to go down (which you don’t
normally need to do…at least with the last 4 surgeries, that wasn’t the
case). During this time I had a state
championship in track I was shooting for and speed of recovery at this point
was mandatory.
So after an annoying month or two of wondering what was really wrong
and hiding a knee injury from recruiters that were promising high flying
expectations of their future program, I was finally cleared for surgery. The method he used was a Thermal Energy
Laser. The idea was that one could heat
the ACL and cause it to twist back on itself like a strand of rope in a
double-helix formation; thus shortening the ligament and eliminating the need
to replace it. It never healed. In fact it indirectly caused another injury
in track that year that cost me a spot in the 100m state championship heat. My Ethiopian thighs combined with
over-average fast-twitch muscle fibers virtually snapped my cuneiform bone in
my foot upon extreme exertion. You can
only tape a broken foot so long. Due to
the knee injury not healing, I could never get a quad-pump to get my thighs in
pre-injury condition no matter how hard I worked out. The same thing happened to Bo Jackson on his
hip. His muscles virtually snapped his
hip bone. (Of course, the athletic
builds and successes aren’t comparable at all; just the nature and mechanics of
the injury). The best I did was read the
Saturday morning paper of the state track championship results while in a foot
cast, fully knowing I could have at least taken 3rd. Many in sprinting category went on to play
major college football.
Even as a volunteer representative for my church in
Well during my service in
All these findings were discovered on retrospect after the
dealings were done of course. While away
for 2 years, Allen had an ankle and knee surgery with Dr. Kimball and that’s
where the transition to Dr. Kimball came in to play. Dr. Kimball had known about Dr. Hawkes’ story as soon as we mentioned it. We said, “Dr. Hawkes
always liked to be on the edge of technology.”
And Dr. Kimball said, “Well, he was actually over the edge of technology.”
He made my ACL a “brittle candy cane” with his laser and did worse to my
dad. Vernal is a great place to move and
practice your visionary procedures away from the city slicker
know-it-alls. Our small-town naivety and
lack of luxury to shop for specialists proved to be a horrible lesson
learned. Go ahead and argue that
genetics caused knee injuries in the family, but environment won this one.
I should note that through more injuries and more surgeries, Dr. Hawkes’ complications have nearly reversed themselves in my case and I came out pretty well. I’ll always live with some slicing and dicing
he did on my trochlear notch, though. Due to lack of synovial fluid, my knee creaks
like an old hinge but it’s not that bad.
My life isn’t ruined by this surgery alone, just a few years of agony in
my 20’s…years where I could have played college football a little longer and
suffered less in