As they say in theater, “the show must go on”. This is true for professional ballet dancers and athletes alike when experiencing injury. We are all still expected to get on stage or stay in the game while injured and expected to perform or make the winning point. My first major injury occurred when I was an apprentice on tour in San Antonio performing The Nutcracker with the Alabama Ballet. During a rehearsal, I fell on stage and landed on the side of my foot, overstretching and spraining the lateral tendon of my right ankle. As a later learned, this tendon is called the “anterior talofibular tendon” or ATFL, and is the most commonly sprained ligament by both athletes and non-athletes. Immediately, I experienced swelling and pain with movement,
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I learned from my doctor that while only 25% of population is born with this, dancers have high propensity to develop side effect symptoms referred to as “Nutcracker Syndrome” as I had. In this situation, the extra bone gets fractured from the pressure of being in-between the talus and rest of ankle when put into extreme positions of flexion from dancing in pointe shoes. She explained to me that if the bone is intact, then a cortisone shot could be used to help with the pain. However, my bone was fractured, and because rest and ice did little to alleviate the pain she suggested that I have surgery to remove this fractured bone, especially before it fully broke into floating pieces and caused long term damage to tendons like my Achilles. This was the first time that I would need surgery to fix an injury. The surgery would be fairly simple to remove the extra bone. My doctor did however share with me that while many patients are able to get back to their normal levels of strength and flexibility after a few months, some have complications such as scar tissue buildup, bone regrowth, nerve damage and Achilles tendon issues. One of my fellow dancers with Ballet Tucson had previously also had her Os Trigonum removed, and after about eight years it regrew and she now has to get a yearly cortisone shot to help with the pain. I weighed the pros and cons and decided that for the long-term, not getting this bone removal could lead to worse issues and that getting the surgery now was the right option. Making a decision to have surgery is very hard, but I learned that the best way to decide was to consider what would be best overall for the general health and functionally of my
I learned from my doctor that while only 25% of population is born with this, dancers have high propensity to develop side effect symptoms referred to as “Nutcracker Syndrome” as I had. In this situation, the extra bone gets fractured from the pressure of being in-between the talus and rest of ankle when put into extreme positions of flexion from dancing in pointe shoes. She explained to me that if the bone is intact, then a cortisone shot could be used to help with the pain. However, my bone was fractured, and because rest and ice did little to alleviate the pain she suggested that I have surgery to remove this fractured bone, especially before it fully broke into floating pieces and caused long term damage to tendons like my Achilles. This was the first time that I would need surgery to fix an injury. The surgery would be fairly simple to remove the extra bone. My doctor did however share with me that while many patients are able to get back to their normal levels of strength and flexibility after a few months, some have complications such as scar tissue buildup, bone regrowth, nerve damage and Achilles tendon issues. One of my fellow dancers with Ballet Tucson had previously also had her Os Trigonum removed, and after about eight years it regrew and she now has to get a yearly cortisone shot to help with the pain. I weighed the pros and cons and decided that for the long-term, not getting this bone removal could lead to worse issues and that getting the surgery now was the right option. Making a decision to have surgery is very hard, but I learned that the best way to decide was to consider what would be best overall for the general health and functionally of my