Am becoming a veteran of dance with orthopaedic injuries... dislocated my knee (again!) during the last rehearsal for Nunuk Ragang on Tuesday. Will be off dancing for a bit. Again. Goddess' post (whichI've been trying to leave a message on but some strange formatting prevents me from entering the word verification response) neatly describes the Knee Incident. That was one stretch I shouldn't have done. Or it could have been because I forgot to bring along my knee guard that day, though I'm not sure the knee guard would have saved it. Thanks to Goddess & Pilates Instructor for the innovative hot 'rice-pack' (which quite amused the medical officer at A&E).
I didn't realise how prone my kneecap actually was to popping again until my appointment with the orthopaedic surgeon the following day. Doc was able to move the patella around like it was floating on water, and just as it was beginning to sink in how strange that looked and felt, doc manages to actually slightly shift it sideways again! It would seem that the fibres which prevent too much sideways movement of the patella are either torn or severely weakened (probably mostly from the last injury). Am to go for physio for 4 weeks, and doc will reassess the knee after that. Surgery is an option for some patients, to sew up the said fibres. But strengthening the thigh muscles and physiotherapy 'for the rest of my life' probably would be sufficient.
I can walk fine, using a patella-stabilising knee brace. This new one I got doesn't seem to be as ergonomic as the model I used the last time - the lower section is too narrow and has a deadly grip on my calf, which gets really sore by the end of the day. Also, it takes 5 minutes, friction and a lot of tugging of neoprene material on already-sore calves to take off the brace.. I could well get other injuries in the process, ha ha. Anyway, that's going to end - armed with IKEA velcro, a pair of scissors and needle and thread, I am going to make modifications to the knee brace to incorporate a slit where it covers the shin (which can be opened/closed/adjusted using the Velcro) that would allow for improved circulation and safer removal!
Was looking forward very much to performing the dance but I guess I'll have to resign to the fact that with the bad knee I really can't leap and stretch anymore without risking an aggravation of the old injury. (Tap dancing is obviously not the best thing to do to a bad knee either, but at least the movements are more controllable... though I'd probably never be able to do single-leg pull-backs on the left ;-D)
I shall leave you for now to be entertained by some old war stories:
- The last kneecap dislocation and the first physio session with the electrodes
- Easter weekend, a danged earring stud, and an absent-minded triage nurse
- The oddest fracture: Don't think I've blogged about this incident from university days, other than the brief reference to it in 'the last kneecap dislocation' above... the lesson here was, make sure you do dance practices on a proper floor; don't ever compromise on that. A team of university mates putting on a contemporary dance piece to the theme song of 1998 HK movie 'The Stormriders' rehearsed on carpeted cement floor in the Hall dining room due to lack of proper rehearsal space. Yours truly executed the mother of all front kicks on pointe (i.e. atop the hard shoes that allow ballet dancers to stand on their toes). The upward momentum threw me off balance and I fell sitting on the floor. I felt mostly just numb for the rest of the day, and nobody, including the campus GP, suspected anything more than a bad jolt and some shocked thigh muscles until the x-ray results showed a hairline fracture on the pelvic bone. So for weeks I went to classes on the university's Disability Services van, hobbled around on crutches, even gave the campus sports doctor a scolding for scheduling an appointment to "teach me how to use crutches" on a date TWO weeks after I got the crutches by which time I would already be 'pro' at it (tho it really wasn't his fault), and went everywhere clutching a cushion which i had to sit on. And obviously had to pull out from the dance. No fun.
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The stuff that goes with coffee and nasi lemak :)
3 comments:
Exchequer! Not sure why that Word Verification doesn't work. Maybe need to update browser? But your list of injuries is ouch-inspiring. Hope the knee is getting better! And, thanks so much for your help and support!
knee is getting better, thank ye ;)
re word verification: i could only see the top half of the word image, & the 'publish' button wasn't in sight :-D using latest ver of browser. must be a quirk on blogger that day...
I remember that odd fracture ^^. Do you still have any pictures from those days though? I can't seem to find any from my own! :)
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