This is the story of how I gave up Irish dancing for Lent. Don't worry, this will eventually be a very inspiring story because it's actually still a work in progress. This story is about how I destroyed 60% of my ankle.
Two weeks ago at dance class, everything was normal. I led the class in the usual warm ups. We did our normal drills across the floor. It only took one second for it all to change. I decided to try for some extra height on my plushenko because hey, that's what drills are for. I prepped, I jumped, I spun, and then something went wrong. I came down from the jump, landing on the side of my foot. I immediately felt things popping and contorting. The pain was immediate. As I hobbled to the side of the dance floor, all I could concentrate on was not crying. I sat down and was given ice, all the while fighting immense pain. With a small crisis taken care of, dance class continued as normal. As the ice and Advil I had taken began numbing the pain, I knew I should leave dance class and begin the trek to my car and eventually home. Standing up to leave, that's when the tears I was doing my best not to shed came. One of the guy dancers assured me that this is probably the best time for this sort of thing to happen anyways--I'm not preparing for worlds. There are no competitions coming up for me. I will heal.
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| One hour |
The next day I went in to the podiatrist. It was immediately clear to him that I did something horribly wrong, and luckily he didn't want to manipulate it and poke at it too much. I then had x-rays to look for broken bones. In truth, I wanted a broken bone. Once they heal, you are golden with only a little physical therapy to strengthen it back up. Tissue damage takes longer to heal, and if it heals wrong, surgery is involved. Nothing really showed up on my x-ray, other than a healing stress fracture in my first metatarsal (which I didn't know about). I was then told to get an MRI.
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| Six days. |
My MRI was scheduled for Monday morning, the results were sent to my podiatrist, which bring us to Tuesday afternoon. He walked in the exam room and said, "You did a good job on your ankle." Unfortunately, there was no fracture. No, instead, I tore three ligaments, one completely, and two others only partially, effectively damaging 60% of the ligaments that hold my foot onto my leg. It was then that I asked the vital question here: will I dance again? My podiatrist then asked if I was going after a professional career, and I said no, just trying to qualify for the world championships in the spring of 2013. The good news is that yes I will dance again and that I need to put his name somewhere on my list of sponsors (joking)! The bad news is that it will be a few months after lots of PT and hoping my ligaments don't heal too loosely (surgery would be needed), and hoping that I don't get tendinitis. I was put in a boot and told to come back in three weeks. Maybe then I'll be off my crutches...
Now, two weeks after the fact, I am about to go in to dance class for a short bit this evening to let everyone know what happened. Can't wait to see their faces when I tell them what really happened after I so calmly handled (I thought) doing this damage. Hopefully I will be able to help out with various St. Patrick's day activities since I won't be dancing!
Goals: Heal up!
