We Brought Karuhat to Get PRP Treatment for His Knee: Remaking Superman (Patreon)

Karuhat is somewhat on the young end of the scale of Golden Age Legends, just dipping his toes into his 50s, still agile and full of swagger. Three years ago, however, he hurt his knee while training a student who didn't know what he was doing and was very large, and this single moment resulted in a torn meniscus. Karuhat still moves and glides and melts, but he wears a knee brace and grimaces when the weather gets cold or damp and his knee starts to hurt. His physicality is very much a part of who he is - which is likely the case with any athlete and performer - and how he moves is what makes Karuhat, Karuhat.

Two years ago when Covid first started we took Karuhat to an hospital to have his knee looked at for surgery. That's when the tear was diagnosed, but with the influx of patients and uncertainty all around, the possibility of organizing for his surgery went sideways. So he's more or less just been dealing with it, while Kevin and I keep fretting about the risks of letting it get worse, which, so far we've been super lucky and it's remained relatively stable. But teaching is Karuhat's livelihood and flowing is how he instructs. He's not a padholder, really. The way his mind works and how he gets you to understand is to feel the way through movements together, like interpretive sparring; his body is itself the pads as he guides you through offenses and defenses, teaching you how to read the movements. He lets you land a strike to his body rather than targeting a pad, then shows you how hard it is to repeat that success without his permission to land it on him.

This week Karuhat has been staying with me and Kevin in Pattaya. We drove all together to my fight in Hua Hin, then returned home and started up sparring in the mornings. "Sin," Karuhat wrote to me early in the month, "I want to come train Muay already." This is his way of saying he wants to come visit and work with me for a few days. Because I had a fight scheduled at the end of the month, the timing was organized for him to come corner for me, help us film for the Muay Thai Library, and teach me after the fight rather than leading into it. In the days we've been working together after the fight, I'm sparring with stitches in my shin and he works around it without ever - not even once - touching the injury. He's an expert, a master, seemingly miraculous. I gave him a Superman shirt that he saved for a special occasion of going out with some other Legend friends in Pattaya, an external representation of what kind of superhuman thing he is while calling him by a different name... honestly, Superman wishes he were Karuhat.

It dawned on me that there's a clinic here in Pattaya that offers PRP, an alternative to surgery that some ex-fighters I know have used and they had really good experience there. Kevin was already familiar with the treatment because he follows professional Basketball and apparently it's very common among those athletes. I found an article in Thai and sent it to Karuhat from my livingroom, while he sat outside in the evening light listening to news on his phone. "Do you want to try this?" I asked him. He came inside a few minutes later and said he'd be willing to go talk to the doctor about it, so I set the appointment for the next day and after sparring we climbed on my motorbike and zipped across town to the medical center. Karuhat was so nervous. He was the same when we took him to the hospital in Chiang Mai a few years ago for his knee; he becomes like a young boy, trailing behind me a few steps to make me "go first" into each new area. I helped him fill out the medical form, despite it being in Thai and not English, and went with him to each of the various stations in the clinic to have his blood pressure checked, meet with the doctor, and have a scan of his knee to see what the level of damage was. Turns out he's a very good candidate for this treatment because of the kind of tear he has, which to my ears was all very good news. I was really only there as moral support while he talked to the doctor, but Karuhat is so shy I ended up answering some questions for him about how the injury happened or how long ago it was, and when the doctor got the images up on the screen he called me over to explain what he was seeing as well. I could actually see Karuhat settle a little bit, just by me standing there looking at it with him. The doctor explained the best treatment plan was a combination of PRP and Stem Cell therapy, which I nodded along to while Karuhat just stayed very quiet. I made sure he was willing to do it - there would be an initial treatment in 2 days (meaning he had to stay longer than we had scheduled) and he'd have to come back down to Pattaya in 2 weeks for a second one. He nodded that he was willing to do this and I was very happy to go make the appointments and pay for the package. As we walked out, in the tiniest voice, he admitted that he's terrified of needles. He was okay with the idea of surgery, he's been dealing with the pain of his knee for nearly 3 years, and yet the needles are the part that give him pause.

So today we went for the actual treatment and, again, Karuhat was trailing behind me as we moved from room to room with the medical staff. He went into an oxygen chamber for 30 minutes, but was allowed to play on his phone throughout that part. Then we moved over to the doctor's office where he thoroughly explained the time-sensitive issues around opening and using stem cells (kept in a temperature-controlled container) and had Karuhat lie down on a table so they could draw the blood for the PRP. It was at this point, with two medical staff just methodically going through the very practiced movements of drawing blood, that Karuhat started sweating... a lot. I can attest through years of experience working with him that Karuhat barely even breaks a sweat until 20 minutes into our sparring. Just the thought of a needle and he was soaked. He laughed about it, we all laughed together a bit, but he was  truly having to put himself through something for this procedure. It's one thing to talk about how easy it is, which relative to surgery it absolutely is, but that all depends on what one's personal phobias are. Karuhat was actually having to be very brave to go through this process, more so than if I'd told him to get in the ring and beat up a giant. Once the blood was drawn and he was waiting for the plasma to be spun out, he got to lie there and flirt with the nurse who was doing some kind of ultrasound on his knee to break up any inflammation that might be there. That was cute to listen to. She didn't know who he was and he was ridiculously humble in expressing his accomplishments.

The doctor finally came in for the injections, having spun the blood and unpacked the stem cells from their cold box. The whole preparation of getting the plasma and stem cells into the syringes took about 10 minutes but Karuhat kept his face turned away the entire time. He was so nervous, just dreading the moment that the injections would actually happen. The first injection was clearly quite rough for him, he jumped and clutched his hands together over his chest. The second one was much easier; that's the one he'll have to repeat in 2 weeks so hopefully he won't just lie awake in a cold sweat the night before that one takes place.

We have an appointment for 2 weeks and sometime before his birthday in May he should be feeling improvements. This is an effort of literally preserving the legacy of Karuhat. If he can't move the way his mind and heart tell his body to, he isn't being Karuhat. You could use all the words you know, arranged by the greatest poet, and you'd never come close to expressing what Karuhat is. He has to show you. He has to be Karuhat for you to see what it is, and by God you see it. You feel it. We hope that this will give him relief from his discomfort and pain, as well as restore some of his freedom to continue teaching and guiding his legacy.

Karuhat getting his knee scanned to see what the state of his injury is and what the best treatment plan is.

The medical staff putting Karuhat in the oxygen chamber. 

Karuhat sweating bullets as they prepare to draw his blood for the PRP.

All hands on deck, holding the leg in correct position so the doctor can inject stem cells and PRP into the knee. Considering how much this terrified him, Karuhat was a f***ing champ throughout the whole thing.