Burg72 said:
A while back after Swann had his surgery, my brother had knee surgery and his PT was one of the PT's for Swann. She said Swann had a very low pain tolerance (not exactly in so nice of words). I think she might of said he was a bit of a baby. I just wondered it he really pushed his rehab if he might of been something great. I guess you never know what pain a person really has unless you're in their shoes.
Not that I can say she's lying but I have a hard time believing a guy who played for years with zero cartilage in his knee had a low pain threshold? I know there was the sitting out with the broken finger incident but I alway sort of attributed that to Swann thinking that the team took for granted that he'd play injured.
In 1998 Swann had surgery, that was later revealed by Dr Chick to be "essentially the same procedure Steadman performed" meaning Microfractures. At that time the standard was 6 weeks non weight bearing, ie on crutches. Swann was back PLAYING, 5 weeks later. He gave it a shot but he just couldn't play, I recall Joe Greene saying how Swann was in such pain he had a hard time firing up out of his stance because he couldn't push off the bad leg. He eventually shut it down and Steadman did microfractures again and then basically came out and said the first time around the rehab had been completely mishandled by the Cards.
If I had to guess I'd say she worked with Eric later in his career when he had a long history of injuries and was probably starting to doubt if it was "worth it" to work hard to get back? I mean the guy had something like 9 or 11 surgeries on his knees before he retired, if he really was a baby he'd have never lasted that long IMHO.