The Amazing Charlie Davies Recovers from Near Death
Twelve months right after almost losing his life, Charlie Davies is back on the soccer field.
With only one final match of the 2009 World Cup qualifiers, Charlie Davies of the Yanks suffered severe injuries in a car cash outside Washington, DC. The accident left Davies with a broken fibula, tibia and femur on one leg, a torn ligament on his other knee, a fractured elbow, eye socket and nose, serious head trauma, and lacerated his bladder. Following a remarkable recovery physical therapy program, the 24-year-old forward is back on the field with the reserve squad for Sochaux, his French pro club. His goal is to rejoin the first team. Though his mentor says that won’t take place till at least January. As of January 2011, Charlie was off to Tunisia Training Camp for 5 days.
Chris Floyd from ESPN in a question and answer session with Davies recounted the ins and outs of Davies recovery.
After coming to , still out of sorts and in a panic Davies thought someone wanted to rob him of his organs and started to pulled out some of the stitches in his stomach. A nurse ran in and had to explain exactly where he was and what had happened. The three weeks after Davies was in a haze and didn’t recall much.
4 weeks after he was transferred to a rehabilitation hospital and had his first steps on crutches in so much pain that it brought tears to his eys. Davies explained “Putting pressure on my right leg and believing it would hold me up felt like trusting somebody with your life on a 300-foot cliff”. Five weeks after the incident, he proceeded to go to Delaware to rehab with trainer James Hashimoto, who had worked with him on the U.S. team. Hashimoto started Davies strolling the corridor which left him out of breath, exhausted and about to faint . Any motion was painful because each movement was tearing scar tissue.
Soon after, he was doing athletic drills like little hurdles and dancing. There were delays with his leg, but the left arm was in even worse condition with only a solitary intact nerve in his elbow. It wasn’t until late December that he could move his thumb. After two months of making an attempt to painfully straighten the elbow by Hashimoto’s manual force, the decision was made that Davies would need a surgical treatment due to the bone growth in the joint. Davies explained “I couldn’t feel my left hand or use my fingers for several weeks. It turned out I was lucky because a single nerve was still firing near the elbow”.
Through all this he was still making advancements. By the time January rolled around Davies was already jogging on an anti-gravity treadmill by AlterG, which will take pressure off your lower extremeties. The AlterG treadmill lets the physical therapist or patient set the precise amount body weight down to 20% of a person weight. Davies initial setting was 60% of his body weight, but he would always up it 70% when no one was looking. His teammate Oguchi Onyewu was there rehabbing his torn patellar tendon, and wouldn’t take pain meds, so neither would Davies. In February, Davies sent videos of his agility drills to teammates and they’d responded with “You’re kidding me? You were almost dead. What are you taking?”
In March he moved back to France and began training with his old club and reality set in. There was no Anti-gravity treadmill and he was working out with world-class athletes. Davies said “It felt as if I’d never played soccer before”. His best moves were not there and teammates have been gettting aggravated and Davies was gettting anxiety headaches.
His target of being able to make it back again in time for the World Cup was ruined in May when a coach Bradley of the Yanks let him know that he was not ready for training camp, but was doing a great job of recovering. Davies said “looking back, in my heart I know I couldn’t have competed then at the international level. I have no bitterness and now no deadlines: I’ll be ready when I’m ready.”
The recovery made by Davies has been nothing less than excellent in that his physical health and fitness has improved incredibly since the accident. Davies has already matched his pre-accident strength and stamina levels, and his speed is steadily improving.
