Hello to all, with many wishes that 2020 has started off in the very best of ways for you!!!
I haven’t been entirely sure how to begin my story, without giving too much information (since these experiences are still very emotionally charged) and while still expressing the very point and purpose of this ACL blog thread: to learn from my many mistakes and hard lessons AND to be successful through complicated injuries such as these and not follow in my VERY messy footprints. (You see what I did there – – – jaycees footprints…👣 Okay, moving on…🤪)
SO, here I am, ready to share my epic story of my ACL journey! And what better way to do this than to start from the very beginning! I will do my best to pick up the pace and get to the good, helpful stuff! Though the pieces surrounding the good, helpful stuff are pretty significant in showing you all the places where I unknowingly went wrong. And exactly what you do NOT want to do, without a doubt! 🚫
Without further ado, let’s press rewind and take it from the top:
Prior to year 2013, I knew barely anything about the Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) found in the knee except that it exists and that it’s important. Seen as the most crucial ligament in the knee for stability, it connects the femur and the tibia (the thigh and shin bones) which assists the maintenance of the bone structures when performing twisting/pivoting/cutting moves. For any athlete or dancer, specifically, this ligament is like gold. And that doesn’t become crystal clear until a traumatic injury occurs, like an ACL tear, and it changes everything.
As a dancer since I was four years old, the strength, flexibility, and the body and spatial awareness that I developed over the years were immeasurable. Jumps were my absolute favorite, along with backbends and anything that showcased flexibility because I was always very “bendy.” Being little, with long legs and a flexy body, helped me stand out in dance auditions and therefore obtain my dream of becoming a professional dancer for nine years.
And back tricks were always a specialty of mine, where I could play with some contortion-esque moves and give people the creeps!!
This confidence, poise, body awareness, and spatial perception all went into hiatus after my Left ACL was fully torn on a professional dance contract. It began with turning on a sticky, humid floor – – in which my foot was stuck and my body (most importantly, my knee) turned anyways. After never having been injured seriously in the past, yes, my knee felt “funny behind the knee” but I couldn’t just STOP, of course. Especially if I was in rehearsals for a new cruise ship contract…so no big deal, I’ll just wrap the knee and keep going because it’ll heal and be fine, right? 🤦🏻♀️
I monitored it and kept it in check as best as I could. But during another rehearsal I was caught in the moment, being swept away by the song we were dancing, and I did a big jump without thinking about it. As soon as I landed, my knee buckled and I fell to the floor. WHOA!! That’s not good a good sign. But I got up, walked around, started jumping, and I told my dance cast that I thought that I was fine…when in the back of my head, my knee felt a little “looser” and I knew that something was wrong. I kept dancing for the next few days, being able to do the moves but feeling more and more uncertain of why my knee buckled in the first place. I finally decided that it was time for the ship doctors to have a look.
Now, as an aside, I do realize that soft tissue injuries are very difficult to diagnose without MRI’s and images to view. Even still, I have learned to listen to a Doctor/Nurse’s examination results of my knees with a grain of salt because I have been misdiagnosed more times than I can count, by the various knee tests and palpation examinations that professionals do to “get an idea.” So, in case you are experiencing an injury at this very moment and you have received a theoretical diagnosis, my first piece of advice would be to take it to the next step and get imaging done, if you can. Especially if you are concerned and your symptoms are not diminishing, physical testing is often inaccurate and it can’t show you what’s really going on. It is in your best interest to investigate the truth of where you stand, rather than base your recovery and your next step on a theory that could be very inaccurate and injure you more. Your body and your time are very valuable so please take both into consideration and never settle.
My first diagnosis of my left knee was that I sprained my MCL, or my Medial Collateral Ligament that supports the inner knee, and I was told to go back to Buffalo for THREE WEEKS, in order to rehab it and get back to my contract. That seemed like an eternity and I was devastated; however, the quicker that I could heal, the quicker I could return to my job so I returned to my hometown of Buffalo, NY.
Once home, I immediately went to an Orthopaedic facility to get examined again. My second diagnosis was that I had injured my meniscus, but an MRI was requested to look inside my knee and know for sure. I was told by the Doctor that the results would be explained to me in a week…..so when this very Doctor called me the VERY NEXT DAY, I knew that something was seriously wrong. It was at that moment that I was told that my “meniscus is fine but you don’t have an ACL at all…so this means you require an ACL Reconstruction which is a minimum of a SIX MONTH recovery……” Hello? Did I just pass out for a minute?
Almost. I can never truly explain how I felt at that very moment. Going from a three- week recovery, which already felt like a long break from dance, to a 6-month recovery from an intense knee injury….. Insane!!! Plus, it meant that I wasn’t ever returning and finishing the dance contract that I had just freshly started. “Devastated” doesn’t even come close to my feelings from this news and what it might mean for me and my dance career….
And yes, I shall leave you in a bit of a cliffhanger! The next part of the story from my first round of Physical Therapy is THE MOST CRUCIAL PERIOD OF MY SIX-YEAR SAGA. Therefore, that deserves all of the attention without a doubt. My next post(s) will be sure to have invaluable information and contain many substantial facts that I was clueless and unaware of at the time…leading me to this very day! Serious shitake, I promise you!!!
Please take care of you and the cliffhanger will be resolved very soon!
❤️❤️❤️