Boston Bruins prospect Jake DeBrusk missed part of the 2015-16 Western Hockey League season with a lower body injury — a common designation that could refer to anything from a hangnail to a broken leg.
Well, DeBrusk revealed the exact nature of the injury to WEEI.com’s DJ Bean on Wednesday, and it’s about as bad as you ever could have imagined.
As DeBrusk explained it, a blocked shot during a Nov. 3 game resulted in him taking a puck straight to the testicles, which caused one to swell “to the size of a tennis ball.”
“It was the scariest thing, looking down and it’s just like, ‘Oh my Fod. What’s going to happen?’ ” DeBrusk, the 14th overall pick in the 2015 NHL Draft, told Bean. “You’re 18 years old and you’re thinking to yourself whether you’re ever going to have kids, things like that. I freaked out.”
If you want to stop reading right there, we don’t blame you.
OK, ready?
He continued: “The only thing I’ll remember about it is just the pain. That’s the worst part about the injury, is how much it hurt, because I tried to get up. I went down and I didn’t know what happened, because you don’t feel it in that area. It goes up to your mid-section, so I thought my appendix burst or something, because I couldn’t move. It was an unbelievable feeling. I’ll never forget it. I tried to get up and I had to crawl to the bench. I had to crawl and they were like, ‘Get up, get up.’ I was like, ‘I can’t get up.’ ”
The young winger was taken to the hospital and, after receiving shots of painkillers and morphine for two hours, underwent surgery. The pain was so severe, DeBrusk said, that he fainted in his hospital room.
“I couldn’t sit down. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t breathe,” he told Bean. “It was awful.”
DeBrusk went on to explain how he waited a mere three weeks before resuming a full workload on the ice — a bad idea, he now admits — and said he’d returned to full health by the time he arrived in Wilmington, Mass., this week for Bruins development camp.
Glad you’re feeling better, Jake. Now excuse us while we wipe the last five minutes from our memory forever.
Read DeBrusk’s full injury story here, if you dare >>
Thumbnail photo via Steve Mitchell/USA TODAY Sports Images
