What day is today????????
FEBRUARY 29, 2020 a.k.a. ‘LEAP YEAR’ DAY!!!!!
Since this date is very unique and gives us an extra day of love in February, I thought it would be an excellent time to tell you my unique story from 2014 and take advantage of this lovely added day! Now we can look at my obvious “Hindsight Mistakes,” (please revisit the last post if needed) and we can break down the events leading up to my “knee casualty” from Physical Therapy and how it continues to terrorize me all these years after. This way you can hear my perspective regarding the chain of events as I start to piece the information together for you and YOU can start to make your own conclusions from this information. Maybe your views and understandings will differ compared to mine and if so, I would love to hear your opinions, experience, expertise, and/or wherever you see something that perhaps I missed. Everything is helpful so please send me a message if there is something you feel compelled to share!!! (Thank you very much!❤️)
Before I begin, I do want to clarify a few things and make sure that I do not mislead, confuse, or upset you in any way:
1 – It may sound like I despise Physical Therapy and Physical Therapists as I tell this upcoming story. I assure you that this is not the case at all! On the contrary, it is still one of my options for when/if I go back to school!!! However, my first round of Physical Therapy was destructive for me on many levels and it did nothing to prepare me for maintaining my strength and preventing further injury. And my second round of Physical Therapy was still atrocious, in very different ways. Since I did not have positive Physical Therapy experiences, my story will shed a very negative light on PT. HOWEVER, I completely respect the profession, realize how necessary it is for many healing conditions, and I know that there are qualified, caring, and brilliant Physical Therapists out there who strive to give their patients the best care. Please keep this in mind as you read on because my intention is not to offend anyone.
2 – As I continue on with this story, I am not trying to point fingers and blame everyone else for what went down. I promise you that I am not trying to “play victim” and seek sympathy for these circumstances of the past. I am certainly not blameless for many things and I take responsibility for my actions regarding everything that has happened to me. HOWEVER, I have had a lot of help getting me to where I am now due to poor guidance and this uncanny neglect of critical information. This has unfolded into 4 additional knee surgeries, two of them being full ACL Reconstructions, with one waiting in the wings, which is another ACL Reconstruction. Again, you can make your own conclusions as to who or how many people are at fault, including me. Regardless, I shall change the names of everyone involved to protect their privacy since my intention is to explain the facts as much as I can so you are more aware of what can go wrong in a PT setting. Things I learned the hardest way that there is.
3 – I do realize that people make mistakes because “to err is human,” of course. And I understand this and I know that my experiences have not been a result of sabotage. For example, my Physical Therapist did not have a secret vendetta against me, hoping that I would get hurt again. At least, I certainly hope not! 😳 Even still, this does not take away from the fact that her poor judgement and leadership had the gravest of consequences for me. So, as much as I forgive those that “led me astray” along my knee saga, putting it very nicely, I still need to call them out for their huge mistakes. Because for me, it was career-ending and life-changing and my mission is to prevent this from happening to others.
4 – I have been on this quest for the past four years to understand how I went down this crazy knee path. Something you should know is this: At this time, you would never know that I was injured, let alone walking around with a fully torn ACL/Meniscus damage/cartilage damage in my left knee. Both of my knees feel exceptionally good, strong, and stable. I have come a long way, sought out individuals that truly changed my life in terms of recovery, (many of whom I paid out-of-pocket for their expertise and guidance and it was the best money I ever spent), and I take very good care of myself with exercise and nutrition….Though, with that last part about exercise and nutrition? Being injured so many times, which means no true “exercising or working out” for long periods of time meant that my nutrition suffered immensely. And I have TOTALLY fallen off of the wagon more times than I can count as I have gone through all of these knee episodes!!!!!!!!!!!
Like, I have bit it, HARD, many, many, many, MANY, many times. As an example, my sister-in-law was pregnant with her first baby and my Mom and I threw her a Baby Shower. Some of those pictures were posted to the glorious world of Facebook, to which I received a “Congratulations, Jamie!” from one particular person because I was in the picture with my sister-in-law…and she thought that I was the one pregnant. OUCHIES!!!!!!! That one didn’t feel so great. A fun, new low for me…
AND YET, I still manage to get back up every single time I face plant, (because I have amazing people in my life and because I am ohhhhh so stubborn!!) and I: refocus; realign; educate myself more and more; experiment with various healing modalities; stay incredibly open-minded, as positive as I can, and with strong faith in myself that I can overcome; and I have managed to keep my knees quite healthy and happy, despite all of the havoc they have been through. (Also, yes, this positivity is frequented by the flip side of this: that I’m useless, destined to be confined to a chair because I’m a hot mess, never to heal again….Thankfully I can push those thoughts away and continue to move forward. Eventually. 😉 I’m working on minimizing that negative talk as I move towards my upcoming surgery, I promise you that!! 🙌🏼)
SO, two questions may come to mind after this spiel of mine: #1) If your knee is so great, why are you opting for another ACL Reconstruction?? A very logical and understandable question. AND #2) Why are you telling me this spiel in the first place?
WELL, let’s start with question #1. It was an insanely hard decision when I was looking at surgery vs. no surgery. I mean, who wants to go through any surgery if they don’t “have” to do so, right? And especially a third round of ACL enjoyment?? NO WAY, JOSÉ!!!!!!! Definitely not me, multiplied by billions and billions. And where I stand right now, I can bike and row like a champ, I can squat, deadlift, and do basically everything training-wise that I need/like to do. And I don’t have any pain doing everything that I have listed. Sounds pretty great, yes?
But the things I can’t do?? Are the three things that I absolutely LOVE to do: Dancing, Running, and Taking Any Fun Fitness Class of my choosing. Because of my invisible ACL, I don’t have the stability in my knee to perform these things successfully and I run the risk of destroying the healthy ligaments and cartilage in my knee if I were to try. Once, I did attempt to run as I was exploring if non-operative treatment was an option for me. Unfortunately, my knee couldn’t handle the impact from an easy jog so my futile attempt to “live without my ACL” was short-lived as a viable choice.
And the most enlightening moment to date was this simplistic question from my amazing and knowledgeable surgeon of now: Do you want to never run, dance, or take class again for the rest of your life??
My Answer: NO. No, I certainly do NOT want that to be the case.
His Answer: Well then, you need surgery in order to do the things you love AND to preserve your knee as much as you can for the future.
Super rational, right?? Hence the decision to say yes to yet another surgery. It just makes sense for the things that I love and where I wish to be one, five, ten years from now.
As for question #2), why did I bother telling you all of this?
To reiterate my perspective that I could have healed successfully from my first ACL Reconstruction and gone back to my professional dance career for longer than one four-month contract. I wish for you to keep this in mind as I tell you my cringe-worthy PT story because had I been properly guided and given the necessary tools and information, I could have avoided ALL of the issues and surgeries that followed. I know this in my heart because I see how well my body and my knees have done and still continue to do to this day, with no pain and distortion, and it continues to make it clearer and clearer to me that that was completely plausible for me back then. If only back then had I acquired this knowledge and awareness that I have now, especially before setting foot in Physical Therapy in 2013-2014…
AND NOW, THE MOMENT YOU’VE POTENTIALLY BEEN WAITING FOR…….
THE BREAK DOWN OF PT 2014!!!!!!!!!!!
Here we go! The major players in this story are my Physical Therapist, Rosette whom we shall call Rosie, and my Orthopedic Surgeon, Dr. Nite.
SO, as you may recall, I was flying through Physical Therapy! The fear of this surgery and specifically the aftermath of the surgery was shedded once I saw how quickly I was progressing. My ACL was healing nicely, I was stationary biking by month two, jogging by month three, running by month 4, and my knee was starting to function more and more like a healthy knee. I seriously felt invincible and I knew my affirmation was making magic happen: That I would heal faster than anyone ever has from an ACL Reconstruction.
As a HUGE Side Note: My surgery center and my Physical Therapy facility, we shall call it Mediocre Orthopedics, were one and the same. Since I had never ever been seriously injured before, I had no idea where to go, who my surgeon should be, nothing. My Mom heard from a friend that Mediocre Orthopedics was successful for him because everything was in one place, which meant that the surgeons and PT team can communicate easily, and this person had great success there. Did I ask what injury this man had who “healed so well” and what his career and activities looked like? Since there is a MOUNTAINOUS difference between working a desk job and being a professional dancer. Answer: Negative. Did I look into any other Orthopedic and Physical Therapy places and research my buns off? No. Did I investigate if this place treated many athletes, specifically DANCERS? Nope. Did I just want to be shown the way and have the surgery over and done with so I could move on? YES. Big Mistake. HUGE!!
STOP……And Remember To Ask Questions!!!!
Dr. Nite, a smart, organized, well-poised, and very detail-oriented knee surgeon was recommended to treat me. She prided herself on doing an as-close-to-perfect-as-possible surgical procedure with the tiniest scars possible. I was sold. And because she knew that I was going back to dance, she recommended a donor graft to be used as the replacement ACL rather than my own tissue. Again, I said sure, not really understanding the pros and cons of every choice that I had in the matter: donor graft vs. hamstring tendon vs. patellar tendon. And at the time, I didn’t think to ask because, again, I just wanted to be fixed.
Now, as for Rosie, she was chosen to help me through my first ACL Reconstruction recovery. She had absolutely no experience in dance and I didn’t realize what a crucial missing piece this was in my recovery. As I later learned from the phenomenal Performance Coach, Ron Brissette, (more on him and his brilliance later!): Rehab is training and training is rehab. Which means that dance should have been included in my recovery during my Physical Therapy process. Which of course IT WASN’T because Rosie had no idea how to do that for me since she had no knowledge of dance….and I didn’t know to ask, since Rosie knew that I was a professional dancer and that I needed a recovery program specifically geared towards A PROFESSIONAL DANCER. So obvious and yet, I didn’t even see it back then!
One of two things should have happened from the very start of my time with Rosie. I should have been wiser and either switched to another Physical Therapist at Mediocre Orthopedics that perhaps had more knowledge in dance OR I should have changed to a different Physical Therapy facility where dance would have been implemented in my recovery.
OR
Rosie should have told me that she could not get me to where I needed to be as a dance athlete, because she didn’t have any dance experience, and she should have requested another possible facility that would be more beneficial for me or at least just told me that she was NOT the right Physical Therapist to successfully guide me back to my career.
Neither of these things happened and that is on both me AND on her.
As I kept moving forward from level to level with Rosie, completing my step-ups, single-legged squats, two-feet hopping exercises, and jogging, I was getting more and more eager to get back to dance. I felt really strong, I thought that I was crushing recovery, and I fully trusted Rosie with her guidance through this process.
Now, as you may recall, the biology healing of an ACL Reconstruction takes 6 months to do, whether I am “crushing” PT or not. It is an interior healing process that needs to take place. Two other aspects seem appropriate to mention at this time, that I only learned of recently but it is something that is worth comparing to what comes next.
First, it is a known fact that NINE months, at least, of Physical Therapy or at least proper training and conditioning is needed in order for an athlete to return to his/her sport and be successful. Six for the biological, NINE to one year for the training and full recovery of the body, and usually up to 1.5 years for the mental game to come around where you fully trust your knee again to function as if it’s uninjured. None of these things I was told in 2014, whether it wasn’t information that Rosie had at the time or whether it was something that was never shared with me.
Secondly, upon speaking with other Physical Therapists about my experiences from 2014 until now, I was told that it appears that there were many gaps in my recovery with Rosie. As if I would reach 85% success rate in Level 1, and because I was doing well and super motivated, I graduated early and Rosie moved me to Level 2. And the same thing happened for Level 2 and 3 and 4….which means that I wasn’t properly ready for the harder, more aggressive exercises and I was living in this false sense of strength and stability.
I mention these things because THIS is what happened next:
I was doing “so well” with running, single-legged hopping, balance work, etc, in Month #4 that Rosie told me that by Month #5 I could go into a specific program for athletes that Mediocre Orthopedics offered, which focused more on strength, conditioning, and agility. I was SO THRILLED and I could see my dance profession coming back to me, closer and closer…
And then….it was literally my last Physical Therapy appointment with Rosie before moving into this intermediate/advanced program. Seriously, the LAST PT appointment with her. And she decides it would be a brilliant idea to give me this exercise: forward single-legged bounding hops over mini hurdles, landing on my newly-ACL’ed knee and then immediately pushing off it to clear a hurdle that was 8-10 inches in front of me. And there were four hurdles to clear and she wanted me to do it FOUR times through. Some of you may not realize how aggressive of an exercise this is – I sure didn’t at the time – HOWEVER, I now know that not only should I NOT have been given this exercise so early, on the cusp of my five-month recovery process, but that it was SO aggressive to ask me to do it four times through, since the leg fatigues quickly and it puts the injured and healing leg at great risk of reinjury. AND, low and behold, this is exactly what happened.
Rosie asked me to do this single-legged bounding exercise and I said, “Sure! I got this!” So, I made it through one round successfully! Two rounds? No problem at all! And then on the third round, I cleared the first hurdle, the second hurdle, the third hurdle…and then I landed and I felt SOMETHING happen in my knee and I just stopped and went as pale as a ghost. The level of fear flowed into my entire being like an avalanche. To an outsider, it wasn’t like my knee completely collapsed and you could see that my knee twisted or did something bad. Rosie saw nothing, watching me the entire time, and she didn’t realize something was wrong until she saw me stop and looked at my face.
I told her that I felt something happen in my knee so she sat me down to do a quick “knee exam.” She said nothing else except, “It would be best if you made an appointment with Dr. Nite to check your knee.” Not a reassuring sign. So I did.
And I will NEVER FORGET the reaction of Dr. Nite when I went to see her after the PT incident. It was a Friday morning. She took one look at my knee, looked me in the face, and without ANY HESITATION she says, “It’s gone!” My heart stopped and I asked what she meant by this. She says, “you tore your ACL again. But we’ll do an MRI to make sure.” At that moment, fear latched itself to my body, mind, and soul and I saw my dance career slipping away. And because it was a Friday, I had to wait the entire weekend for my MRI, which was on Monday, and then the results would be disclosed to me on Tuesday. Thankfully, Dr. Nite made sure to expedite the process and not make me wait weeks for my results. It still was the LONGEST WEEKEND that I have ever had, equipped with many emotional breakdowns, as I’m sure you can imagine.
I went in for the MRI and I tried to convince myself that “if I did it once, I could do it again.” I walked into my appointment for my MRI results and Dr. Nite tells me that my “ACL is still there! It’s attached on both ends but it is frozen. It needs three weeks to rest and then you can resume PT very, very slowly.” To say that I was relieved would be the understatement of the century! To know that my ACL was there, that I wouldn’t “need” to redo the ACL Reconstruction, that all I needed to do was rest and I could resume PT?!?!?! My dance career was still holding on and I could not have been happier!!!
And this was my mistake. Not to ask more questions about what this meant for me. As a dancer, as a hyper-mobile athlete. Does a “frozen” or stretched-out ACL ever truly heal and bounce back? And if so, how does that affect me as I’m dancing, having even more flexibility in my newly-healed knee? Do I need to worry about my right knee overcompensating? What can I do to prevent my left ACL from being fully torn, like it almost was, AND also prevent my right knee from following its footsteps? I asked NO QUESTIONS because I was just so grateful that I did not have to go back to square one….
And yet, here I am, with my left ACL fully torn, awaiting an ACL Reconstruction and being back at square one.
Here is what I learned: a “frozen” or stretched out ACL very rarely heals. And in order for an ACL to “stretch,” it means that there are microscopic tears within the ligament that gives it more give and elongates it “or stretches it out.” The ACL is not stretchy and it’s a thick band of tissue. The only way for it to stretch is through tears in the fibers. Neither Dr. Nite nor Rosie told me this critical fact! That I was now moving/living/soon-to-be dancing with a stretched out, microscopically-torn ACL ligament that will only get worse with activity, especially for a hyper-mobile dancer like me.
In addition to this fact, here is what I learned about ACL recovery that I was never told. I will go into more detail about them in my next post.
1 – An ACL injury is a brain injury. The brain changes it’s connection with the injured knee and with it’s spatial and body awareness. This needs to be a huge part of training to overcome this injury as well as a huge part of maintenance FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.
2 – As with any injury or trauma, the entire body is affected and altered. Rehab needs to not only include strengthening and healing of the injured knee/body part, but also the joints specifically above and below it, the opposite side, your hips, your spine…it has to be a holistic approach to wellness or else the dysfunction in the body manifests and will rear its ugly head when you least expect it.
3 – Your subconscious plays a huge role in healing and if you are holding onto fear-based thoughts, your fears will come true. The mental part of healing can be seen as more significant than physical healing. It is what will hold you back, create hesitation, and potentially cause reinjury.
4 – Just like your mental game, when you complete PT and any training and conditioning programs, there are still strength exercises that you need to do FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. Even after returning to your sport or favorite activities, you need to maintain your strength and your control in order to protect your knee and prevent/avoid further injuries and complications with that healed knee. You will never be free from re-injuring yourself unless you take the proper precautions and create the highest level of body awareness that you can.
I was not told any of this. Not at any point in my first (or second) ACL recovery process. Seriously, not even ONE of the facts that I listed here. Rosie only focused on my left knee. The rest of my body was never acknowledged, unless you call a few rounds of lateral mini-band walks as “hip attention.” Not enough, for sure. I never did any brain training and reconnecting to that knee. And I was never told that there are maintenance exercises, both physically and mentally, that I need to do in order to continually reconnect my brain to my surgeried knee and protect it from future damage and disaster.
What did I get?? I just got cleared from PT at almost 8 months, due to my 3-week break for my frozen ACL, and then I was sent on my way. BYE! With no guidance, no helpful hints, no warnings, and no idea of what I was up against. I left Physical Therapy, realizing that I had to retrain myself in dance, of course, but thinking that I was healed and just needed to be mindful of new dance moves until my knee grew accustomed to them. Otherwise, I was perfect, right?? I mean, I was cleared from PT and that’s what the goal was, yes? Because I had no clue about self-maintenance after an injury and just how truly complex an ACL injury was, even a year plus after the surgery, I was destined to fail and fail again and again until I FINALLY learned these things that I have disclosed to you. Things that would have changed everything for me. Such a shame for my poor knees. They have been through so much.
And this is where I shall leave you, on this magical day of Leap Year. To ponder my words and this story. To connect the dots: to see where I went wrong; to see where Dr. Nite dropped the ball; to see where Rosie mislead me when I needed her most; and to start to understand how intricate an injury like this truly is – – – – which means that the recovery needs to honor these many intricacies and cover every base in order to fully serve the patient and offer the BEST CARE. Truth.
You deserve the very best. Never settle for less. And please ASK QUESTIONS when it comes to your care and your body!!!!
The Light at the END of the Tunnel!!!!!!
Love and light to you!!!!!!!!! 💗✨💗✨