Adults Need to Start Adulting Again
It is not empathetic to let kids decide things that will impact the rest of their lives adversely in ways they simply cannot understand as children.
When I was 16, I broke my left ankle at a national gymnastics competition. It wasn’t dramatic. I landed perfectly — “stuck” the landing, as we say in gymnastics — but felt the impact immediately. I hopped off the mat on one leg and told my coach I couldn’t continue.
I continued. I performed the second vault (2 are required on that event) and then bowed out of the rest of the competition to go to the emergency room. X-rays were done. Doctors said it was fine.
It was purple and deformed. But they said it was fine. Just a sprain!
I went back home to Pennsylvania and continued training. The ankle was wrapped and re-wrapped into a cast-like encasement many times during each practice. If it loosened, I could not keep going. So my coach taped it back up again, so tight my toes turned blue. And I continued my training.
Our team doctor came to the gym periodically and gave me cortisone shots.
One may wonder: How could you actually train on a broken ankle?
I don’t know. I did.
Two years after the injury to my left ankle, after I retired from the sport, the same doctor who had given me more cortisone shots than I can count on one hand, did yet another X-ray and found floating bone chips. He performed surgery, cleaned them out. He said during the procedure (I was awake), while holding up a tooth-sized chip with what appeared to be tweezers: “I guess this is why it hurt!”
Yeah maybe.
Twenty years later, after a slow and persistent decline — I went from being able to run six miles at a time to not being able to walk one — I returned to a doctor. A different one this time. He asked me, after an MRI: “When was the car accident? Your ankle was shattered.”
Shattered? I’m not sure what that means, medically speaking, but it doesn’t sound great.
“There was no car accident. I was a gymnast,” I said.
“Well you have grade 4 arthritis. There is no cartilage anywhere near the joint, not anywhere in your foot. So I have nothing to work with. You’ve got bone rubbing on bone. I can clean it up, but you need to have it replaced, eventually.”
I did some research. It seems ankle replacements aren’t really up to snuff and have very inconsistent results. Unlike knee and hip replacements, ankle replacements have not proven their worth in improving functionality and reducing pain.
I said I’d take my chances. Stick with the devil I know. He “cleaned it up” which involved another surgery to remove the floating bone chips and smooth out the joint for less grinding.
Fourteen years later and it seems to be further declining. Sometimes when I lie down to go to sleep, I can’t endure the pressure of a blanket on top of my left foot and I sleep with my leg dangling off the side of the bed, for a modicum of relief. And some days it’s kind of okay, so there’s that.
No adult ever told me that if I trained on a broken ankle it would cause long term damage. Not a coach, not a parent. How could they have known, really, given the doctor I was seeing said there was nothing wrong with it in the first place? If there was nothing wrong, what harm could come? Sure, the orthopedist who issued the diagnosis had my coaches glaring at him from the corner of his office, letting him know I really needed to get back in the gym if I was going to be ready for the next competition. Did he see anything on the X-ray and brush it aside, feeling pressure from my coaches? I don’t know. But to this day I don’t know how anyone — doctor or not — could have looked at my ankle/foot and said nothing to see here!
This is not a screed about unethical or negligent doctors, though. This is about what I thought I wanted at 17, not understanding what the impact might be today, at 54.
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