Category: Music

Twenty years ago, while stopped at a red light in my little ’89 Honda Civic, behind a couple of other cars, this happened. I was a little late for work that day.

An elderly Russian guy came flying down the Mass Pike exit ramp behind me. I saw him in the rearview mirror, heading towards me fast. I knew he was going to crash and braced for impact. The collision pushed the Civic into the car ahead of me with so much force that it, in turn, hit the car in front of it.

The old guy was taken to a hospital where, as I was told later, he accused me of causing the accident. The Massachusetts State Police didn’t agree. I escaped with a mild concussion, and a badly sprained right ankle.

So began my Posterior Tibial Tendon troubles. I had forced the brake pedal down with so much strength the brake lines blew out upon impact. But a couple of other things also blew out. A blood vessel in my calf split open, and I didn’t know until later that some of the fibers in my PTT had been torn. The damage progressed once I returned to my running schedule.

I was almost home from a 25-mile training run for the Lowell Marathon when suddenly, mid-stride, my right foot literally just stopped working! I could feel something sticking out that shouldn’t have been. My PTT had slipped out of position. After popping it back into place I was able to hobble home the last half-mile.

That white area in the MRI seen along the PTT is tendinosis. There’s a bulge there to this day. With a lot careful attention to that area, along with motion control running shoes and orthotics, the tendon has held all these years. I dread the day if and (probably) when it finally breaks. The PTT in my left ankle is perfectly fine.

What does any of this have to do with WABC? As I have said many times, I was very fortunate to have grown up listening to WABC during its Musicradio ascendency. Its influence on me was so great that it led to my relatively brief but memorable stint working in AM radio. (Technology paid much better, believe me.) The man who transformed 77 WABC into the Musicradio powerhouse was program director Rick Sklar.

https://musicradio77.com/Sklar.html

Rick was a marathon runner in his spare time and in June of 1992 he entered the hospital for minor foot surgery to repair a torn tendon in his left ankle. He never returned home. An unfortunate anesthesia complication took his life on June 22, 1992. He was 62 years old.

Whether the torn tendon was Sklar’s PTT, or his Achilles, that was a terribly lousy thing to happen to him. I continue to be careful with my PTT, in the hope that I can keep running without needing foot surgery.