Broken Glass –– Recovering from a Longterm Injury

February 18, 2019

It has been about a year since I cut my leg and tore a muscle . . . so I thought it was time I shared my story on this platform. I have shared a bit of information on this experience through Instagram, but now I am ready to put the whole thing out there. Ever since joining the dance department at my school, I have watched many of my peers sustain injuries of their own. When the instrument of your craft is something as precious and personal as your own body, it is easy to neglect or sacrifice your mental health for the sake everything else. So I am sharing this story partly as therapy to myself but also for anyone else who has been through a similar experience. It helps to know you are not alone in the battle with your thoughts.

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My first semester as a dance major did not go at all like I had planned. At the halfway point in the semester I was hoping to have gotten into amazing shape from dancing at school everyday, plus extra classes on the weekends and training at home. I had plans to spend hours in the studio exploring new movement & working on bringing a few of my many ideas to fruition. But no matter how many meticulous hours we might spend planning our lives, drawing out detailed maps — I have finally learned that life is never going to follow our planned paths directly. And sometimes, it veers way off course. 

Over the past year I have been going on a bit of journey, one that I am not quite sure how to label yet. But to paint somewhat of a picture: I have been keeping up with bloggers, started dipping my toes into the realm of podcasts and even cracking a few self-help books. I picked up dry brushing, started tuning into youtube on a regular basis, and began dabbling in meditation and astrology. All of this had led me to be more optimistic, maintain a clear head in situations of conflict, and start to believe in signs. It all got me thinking things like “life has a purpose” and “all things happen for a reason.” And then a single shard of glass tore through my newly forming philosophies in an instant . . . and the muscles on the front of my left shin. It tore that too. 

After working so hard at getting myself back into shape, preparing for my audition for 2 months after spending the previous three months abroad, I was sentenced to my bed. Shackled to crutches and tied down by stitches for two weeks, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I should start at the beginning - before it happened. The first week of school was a whirlwind experience. I was running from one office to another getting forms signed, adding & dropping classes like a mad-woman— all while going to class everyday starting at 8 am. I was very busy, and by the end of the week, exhausted. And I loved it. I had just moved back to New York only a month before, so I was still getting settled into my new apartment. My mom was sending me huge boxes filled with belongings I had left behind in my quick escape back to the city. One of those boxes contained a cheap picture I purchased at the Brooklyn Flee Market my freshman year. Sadly, the glass picture frame had broken in transit. My dad advised me that the price of the picture (a measly $10) would not be worth the cost of getting the frame replaced. His suggestion: just take out the glass and hang it up bare. So, late one Sunday night, as I was getting ready for bed, the broken picture caught my eye from underneath my roommate’s bed (it’s designated resting place until I figured out what I wanted to do with it). I don’t know why, but for some reason I decided to get it over with and hang up my picture at 11:30 pm on a school night. I cannot express how many times I have told myself, and others, that I should have just gone to bed . . . I needed to wake early the next day anyways. By circumstance, I had a white shopping bag in my room that I had just received a gift from a friend of mine in, so I pulled the fractured picture up off the floor and began removing its large shards of glass from the frame. I placed the broken pieces into the bag on the floor near my bed and, against my better judgement, turned to hang the picture above my bed without disposing of the dangerous bag of broken glass. Once I completed my little project I started making my way to the other side of my bed to get a better view of my handiwork. I rounded the corner of my bed where the bag of glass sat and, in an instant blur, made contact with a massive shard with my left shin. I hardly felt anything— it was like I had just bumped into the corner of a my bed frame, but I looked down and all I could see was blood. My hands immediately went to my opened leg and I half hopped, half fell into the hallway and shouted for my roommates to call 911. There was so much blood. Too much blood. And the thoughts going through my head alternated from curse words to “my leg, my leg, my leg.” All I could think was— “what if I damaged my leg…. did I cut a muscle . . . how deep did that just go . . .what will I do if I can't dance anymore?” 

The next hours, days and weeks were some of the most frustrating and anxiety filled moments of my life. I had never been so immobilized. I couldn’t walk. I had to rely on other people to do simple tasks for me and that feeling of being near helpless was humiliating and frustrating and sometimes made me downright angry. But most things do . . . it is almost always my default to compartmentalize or funnel my copious emotions into the simple feeling of anger (something I am working on . . . ). Those entire two weeks all I really wanted to do was dance, but I would have given anything just to be able to go for a walk without my underarms growing sore and tender after five minutes on the move. I was constantly blaming and scolding myself for being so stupid, for allowing such an avoidable accident to happen. My parents kept telling me all of the things they are supposed say to over the phone: “It will be okay,” “Everything happens for a reason,” “This is a good opportunity for you to take some time to rest,” “I’m sorry kiddo,” “It was an accident, it’s not your fault,” and the most important one, “At least you didn’t fall onto the bag and something worse happen . . . it is just a leg.” But my inner pessimist found a retort to each of these attempts at comfort. Because we all know, to a dancer, a leg is NOT just a leg.  

Two weeks later, FINALLY, the stitches came out. Which meant I could move without the fear of the two inch gash in my leg re-opening. I had received many tests and exams at this point, but the only imaging I had been approved for was a pre-cautionary x-ray the night of the accident to insure that I didn’t have any glass fragments left in my leg. So many doctors had told me that they didn’t think I had cut anything major, for I could move my leg ( not without difficulty or pain however ) and my nerves were functioning just fine. They said it was all superficial tissue and that I wasn’t in need of extensive imaging despite my urging them and my constant attempts to express the importance of working leg muscles to my college career and beyond. My parents weren’t ready to jump on board the idea of getting an MRI either . . . because they usually cost around $1,000. No one, including me, really knew what was wrong, so I went back to dance. I knew my teachers were starting to get nervous about me sitting out for so long and I was beginning to worry about my grades, not to mention the fact that not participating was starting to make me go crazy. I took it slow, avoiding placing to much weight or strain on my leg and avoiding anything that caused me too much pain. And things got better. Each day I found myself getting stronger, able to do more. And there wasn’t much pain other than the soreness that I convinced myself was a byproduct of two weeks of being immobilized. But a week or two back into classes I started to run into more complications. The swelling was returning and pain was popping up all over my left leg. So my doctor told me to take it easy, bad timing yet again because it was less than a week before I was scheduled to present a midterm combination for ballet. Then a couple of days later, she suggested I get an MRI. It was about time we figure out what was wrong. It took some work on her end to get me approved for the imaging, but I finally had an appointment scheduled. And on March 17th, I got the results. 

The 45 minutes I had spent laying in a magnetic tube filled with noises similar to those you would hear from a construction site revealed a tear in the muscle running down the front of my left leg and inflammation throughout. The verdict: approximately three months to full recovery. And the doctor’s first orders: no dancing or activity any more strenuous than walking for two weeks. “Well that’s just great,” I thought.

I have always been an active person—sitting still is not a talent I possess. I was always the kid that got yelled at in music class for jumping around too much, the player on the volleyball team that got scolded for dancing during matches . . . I even had to do punishment pushups in gymnastics for being distracting while waiting in line at the uneven bars. So staying stationary for too long drives me up the freaking wall. My mind is constantly moving at 2,001 miles an hour and the only things that seem to be able to slow it down and quiet the madness going on inside my skull is movement. Whether it be dancing, yoga, cycling, whatever, when my body moves, my mind stills. So the months of recovery after my diagnosis were near torture for me. Left in bed alone with my endless stream of thoughts. They jumped up and down and back and forth from one extreme to the other:

 “Will my leg ever be the same?” 

“Am I going to get kicked out of the program?”

 “What if they think that I am milking my injury?” 

“I am going to get fat?” 

“How could I be so stupid?”

 “It’s all my fault.” 

“No, it’s …. it’s …. it has to be my dad’s fault, he told me to take the glass out of the frame.” 

“Or my mom, she is the one that sent me the picture.”

 “And Manisha gave me that stupid bag that I put the glass in.” 

“Should I transfer? …. the only reason I want to be at Marymount is to dance … what do I do if I can’t dance?” 

Finding a healthy headspace has been a constant battle that I don’t win most days, but every once in a while I am able to acknowledge that the sun is shinning and that I am more than lucky and blessed to be living in New York and pursuing my dreams. Unfortunately most days I allow myself to sulk and end up fixating on all of the negative thoughts. 

It has been a major bump in the road, one that I know I will get over eventually, transforming the experience into a landmark in my life that I can return to and draw strength and wisdom from eventually, but for now… it just sucks. And it feels like the worst timing ever. 

Even now, just over a year later, I have days where holding a balance in relevé is nearly impossible and jumping makes my left foot feel like a dead fish. I still have "what if" and "should have" thoughts every now and again. I know that they aren't constructive and my over-active mind is probably the number one thing holding me back, but maintaining a positive headspace is extremely difficult. Through it all, the biggest thing I have had to learn is that your friends are hear to comfort and help you (so let them) and everybody is on their own path– it's not fair to yourself to compare your progress to anyone else. You shouldn't be where they are because each of us has walked a completely different road that has led us to the present moment. Accept that. Sit with it. Breathe. And keep your eyes trained forward and your mind present.