My Journey Pt2 - Injuries I've Overcome

Disclaimer: I do not mean to imply that this qualifies me as a physical therapist. I went to physical therapy after almost all of my injuries and believe that they set a great foundation and are often hindered by restrictions from insurance companies. What I do believe that this means is that I understand what it is like to be injured and to have to regain my fitness, I’ve worked around old injuries, and also have been exposed to the possibility of healing old wounds with simple methods applied with thought, care, and consistency. I cannot promise that I can do the same for anyone else but I can promise that exercises can be adapted for almost any fitness level and injury history.

The most serious injuries I’ve overcome (mostly, I still have some scars and some kinks to work out).

• Dislocated kneecap

  • This happened when I was 16. I was at summer wrestling camp and sprawled back on a shot at my legs. My shoes gripped the mat as my feet landed and the other wrestler continue forward towards my legs, my leg hyperextended, everyone heard a pop, and the match was over. My knee swelled to the size of a melon, doctors were surprised I didn’t tear more than I did. I recovered well enough to play soccer that fall, though I wore a knee brace through the rest of high school sports. I had on and off knee pain since then. The doctors said that they expected it to be common based on the structure of my knee and I should expect it to happen more. They also said strength would help keep it from happening again. I took them at their word and doubled down (maybe tripled or more) on strength. I have never dislocated my knee again. I do still get fleeting knee pain from time to time but it never lasts and usually seems to be related to work I am doing on my ankle or hips/low back.

• Sprained ankle

  • This wasn’t a typical ankle sprain. I blocked a shot on goal in a soccer game my senior year of high school with my leg. My foot and cleat stayed planted in the turf as my ankle and leg took the full force of the kick. My ankle rolled over and the game was over for me. The doctors initially thought I broke it. I returned to soccer within 6 weeks or so but added an ankle brace to the “armor” on my leg (I quickly ditched the ankle brace as it seemed to exacerbate my knee pain). I sprained my ankle several (many) times more after that. I remember a nurse saying “sometimes it’s better to just break it” I believe she was implying that then surgery then becomes the best option and they “fix” it with pins and hardware. I sprained it so many times I stopped receiving treatment for it because I knew how to deal with it myself. I have corrected many of the abnormalities and positional weaknesses in my ankles through patient (and sometimes painful) trial and error and now believe that the nurse only believe breaks were better because she didn’t know the potential of rehabilitation.

• Broken arm

  • My arm was partially broken snowboarding near the shoulder joint. Because it was a partial break and the location of the fracture it was left to heal on it’s own. I remember blacking out from the pain when my arm got stuck and twisted putting my shirt on. I had “quick” recovery or more accurately a premature return to lifting weights and an incomplete rehabilitation that I pushed through because I was 20. This was one of the simpler injuries to unwind (assuming I’m done).

• Smashed sacrum

  • I’m still working through this one. I’ve made huge strides.

  • I don’t know if my back was smashed on the side of the bus or the pavement. I don’t know that I care anymore. It resulted in a hematoma the size of softball right on my sacrum and bruising that spread up through my lower back and down my right thigh.

  • The MRI of the area revealed the fact that I had a 15 degree scoliosis and every disc in my lumbar spine was either herniated or bulging. Whether the disc damage scoliosis was from powerlifting or crashing my motorcycle is hard to say. It may have be preexisting before my crash and only discovered after. Many people live with undiagnosed disc bulges and herniation. Either way the smashed sacrum lead to more back pain than I care to describe. There was a large area of my right glute that was numb and displaced. I say displaced only because I don’t know the medical term for what I dealt with. There was an area next to my sacrum where there should have been muscle and there wasn’t, and there was an area that when I flexed my glute there was a baseball size lump of muscle that was “out of place”. I never got good pictures of this. I figured it was permanent but by the time I realized it was getting corrected it was hard to capture and the worst of it was gone. Plus I’m not putting pictures of my butt in my blog, this isn’t that type of website. Through GOATA, FRC, myofascial release, and a LOT of trial and error and pain and patience, that area has been returning to “normal” and feeling has been returning. For anyone going through something similar, the first feelings to return for me has been an itchy feeling, then pain, then “normal”.

• Broken finger/hand (third metacarpal, third proximal and middle phalanges)

  • Another one I’m still working through.

  • Four surgeries over one year. All the kings horses and all the kings men did their best to put Humpty back together again. They did a great job. If you ever have the choice between a finger or hand from the best surgeon around and God, go with the one that God gives you. That’s probably true for other joints too.

  • It’s hard to prove but I believe the motorcycle landing on my hand and my unconscious reaction to that lead to some seriously nasty knots and tightness throughout my right side. In my forearm, shoulder, the muscles around the shoulder blade, through my back, and even in to my neck. I base this belief in Tom Myers Anatomy Trains and the interconnectedness of the musculofascial system. I’m not sure if this is something that will be overcome or continually managed. The structure of my hand was permanently changed. There are still muscles in my hand that seem atrophied. And there’s still lots of scar tissue surrounding the bones.

    • It is also hard to know if the tension in my neck (and elsewhere) is related to this specific injury, another distant injury such as any remaining scoliosis in my spine, another more local injury like one of the concussions I've had, or some combination of all or none of them. (again I'm not a doctor of physical therapist, this is just how I think about the body and injuries)

  • I’ve still managed to make lots of progress here as well. The function of my hand is much better than it might have been. And I’ve released much of the “knots” that seem to be related to this injury. Through that work I can speak to the truth of humans storing emotion in the flesh. It’s hard to say if it’s a muscular thing, a fascial thing, or a nervous system thing. You can’t REALLY separate them anyway. At least not in a living person. All I know is that when I found the tension stored in my teres minor (or some other muscle near that zip code) I bawled. I felt like I did when I first got home from the hospital and was alone for the first time, finally free to feel the fear that I didn’t have time to when I rode over the hill and saw the bus make a left turn in front of me. It took weeks for that tension to dissipate and often it was painful. Maybe I was pushing too hard or maybe my body was holding on to the fear and the pain. With time, persistence, and prayer it went away. There still tension in that area but it’s more manageable and not nearly as emotional.

  • I still have hope to restore more strength and function in my hand, and that I won’t be perpetually dealing with referred tightness from a perpetually crooked finger to area in my neck and back.