Arsenal and Spain midfielder Santi Cazorla who had been told by medical professionals that just walking again with his son in the garden would be an achievement has laid bare the extent of his long-term injury problems.
Cazorla who last played in October 2016 and had ankle surgery two months later says doctors told him he should be "satisfied" just to walk again after he contracted gangrene following an operation.
Despite eight operations, the wound did not heal and became infected. Since then, he learned to live and play with pain in his right foot.
"The first time I could endure the pain a little better. If I got warm I could play, but at half-time, as soon as I cooled down a bit, I would
cry.
" said Cazorla on MARCA
On December 5, 2015, he underwent surgery due to a ruptured external ligament in his left knee, but the problems in the ankle persisted. Based on his desire to be an important player at Arsenal, he managed as best he could for months, although there would be no possible cure that could calm his agony.
At that stage, Cazorla couldn't have imagined the long and dark road that he would have to travel, with operations on the ankle, one after the other. Doctors in England were never very encouraging either.
"If you get to walk again with your son in the garden, be satisfied, they told me." Cazorla continued
So football had to take a back seat whilst he focused solely on his ability to walk again. One year after the operation on the knee, he needed another because of a tendon injury in the plantar area of the right foot. What was assumed to be three weeks of rest, ended up almost finishing Cazorla's
career.
After a month, the stitches were removed, but the wound opened again and again, so much so that he went through surgery eight times in a year. Santi showed MARCA images of his foot during the process, and the image of a heel in gangrene is striking.
"At that time I was still playing. "The medical professionals told me it was okay, the problem was that it did not heal and the wounds would reopen, become infected... Look, in this
picture
I can see the tendon."
Nor could he imagine what Dr. Mikel Sanchez would say to him in Vitoria last May. The footballer came to him after finding no long-term solution in England. When Dr. Sanchez opened him up in the operating room, he put his hands to his head.
"He saw that I had a tremendous infection, that I had damaged part of the calcaneus bone and it had eaten the Achilles tendon. There
was eight centimetres
of it missing!"
It was at that point when they discovered three more aggressive bacteria, one of them causing such infections. The player underwent several successful antibiotic treatments but there was a risk that a blood infection could have meant amputation of his leg.Dr.
Sanchez himself, who admitted that he had never encountered a similar case, made the last reconstruction of the tendon last May 29. The summer has seen Cazorla under an intense rehabilitation programme that is on the right track. Now a bone edema has slowed recovery, but no one speaks of deadlines to be met. Arsenal renewed him in November of last year until June 2018, and he wants to prove in those months that he is not a former footballer.
"I do not have clearance until January, but I will come back by then." the enthusiastic midfielder said
Just a month ago he was running on the pitch of the Estadio Helmantico and his brother, when he saw him, cried. Cazorla hasn't cried, or so he says, in these almost two desperate years.
