Adding Injury to Injury: Rob Gronkowski’s 2013 Season

Whether you are a professional athlete or a weekend warrior, injuries can sideline you.  If you are active you are likely to experience injuries from time to time.  Strength and flexibility can help reduce your risk of injury.  If you suspect an injury, you should seek medical attention sooner rather than later and follow through with your treatment plan.  Here is the story of one athlete’s road to recovery.

2013 was an extremely rough year for New England Patriots’ tight end Rob Gronkowski, affectionately known as “Gronk.” The athlete has set several NFL and franchise records for his team, redefining the tight end role in the process: he holds league records for most touchdown receptions by a tight end, most receiving yards by a tight end, and is the first tight end to lead the league in receiving touchdowns.  Drafted in 2010, what is perhaps even more startling about these records is how many injuries Gronk has fought through in his limited time in the NFL. 2013 was a particularly hard year for the young athlete, making his performances during the limited time has been able to play all the more extraordinary.

2012 Season

Last year, the story of Gronk’s injuries was all about his forearm. After breaking the limb in Week 11, he would not play in a game again until Week 17, only to re-injure his arm in the first quarter of the first playoff game last season. This time, his arm required surgery, and he missed the rest of the playoffs while he recuperated.
2013 Pre-Season and early Season

Growkowski’s forearm was an ongoing concern. In February of 2013, he developed an infection which would ultimately bring the tally of surgeries required to fix his arm up to four as the infection first had to be cleared and later the hardware replaced in the arm. The infection wasn’t fully gone until late May. Then, in June, Gronk underwent surgery on his back, a microscopic lumbar discectomy to correct a herniated disc. He was finally cleared to play on October 20^th 2013 against the New York Jets.
Late 2013 Season

Gronkowski’s return to the field would be heartbreakingly short. On December 9^th, in a game against the Cleveland Browns, Gronk went down with an injury to his right knee that would ultimately end his season and prevent him from making a post-season appearance either. The tight end is now scheduled to have surgery on January 9^th 2013 to repair tears to both his ACL and MCL in his right knee, which will most definitely keep him out of commission until the 2014 season.
Will Gronk Return?

With news that Gronkowski will need to heal from surgery again, needed to correct serious tears to two major tendons in his right knee, questions about his future have arisen. He is a young player, and has gone through physical hardship in the past, and his team is clearly going to take every necessary precaution to get him as healthy as possible for next year. The road back will be long and filled with an aggressive course of physiotherapy, but if everything is successful and he can avoid the setback of another series of post-surgery infections, there is a strong possibility that Rob Gronkowski will set even more records next year.