Reflections on a broken foot
It's been a weird year.
January 22, 2024 began as a normal day. It ended in the Emergency Room and a trip to Wendy’s.
Most people hate Mondays. I did not. Monday was dance day. Dance days meant carpools with Rachel, in-person human interaction1, and learning a modernized version of a folk dance that barely resembles its original form.
I loved it.
In Irish dance, there are four “main” types of dances, each done to its own particular brand of music. There’s slip jigs — elegant, balletic; hornpipe — upbeat, quick; reel — athletic, powerful; and treble jig — loud, solid.2
My favorite of these is reel. I love the feeling of flying around a dance studio or stage and hitting kicks and jumps perfectly to the music. Reel is the reward for surviving the slog that is the hornpipe round.
So when my teacher said we would be running through all three steps of our reels, I eagerly jumped up and went to the front of the line, excited to dance. I was coming off of my best Regionals competition ever, having placed 28th and “recalled” to the final round of competition for the first time. I had two days of competitions coming up that weekend in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and I wanted to be on the podium.
The right foot of the first step went fine. Great, even — my jumps felt higher than normal. I then began the left foot — hop one-two-three, and up and drag and drag and switch-switch, over —
Crack.
I thought the noise was the creaky underfloor, and continued on with the step. As it turns out, it was me that had cracked. My perfectly normal over-two-three, that simple step I had done countless times, had betrayed me upon landing.
My teacher ran up to me, yelling “STOP.” At this point, I realized that yes, something was not right. I hobbled out into the lobby, sat down, and was immediately tended to by a doctor-classmate of mine, who wrapped my foot up in ice and a bandage.3 My teacher assured me that all hope was not lost, and that I could be back for St. Patrick’s Day and Nationals, and that everything was going to be okay.
After a botched attempt to hop down a hallway with two humans as crutches, I suggested we use the office chair as a makeshift wheelchair, and Rachel took me to the emergency room near my house. (Thank goodness she drove that week.)
Mercifully, save a few people who were under some sort of substance4, the ER was pretty deserted. I was called back before I had even finished filling out all of the intake forms.5
Vitals were taken, I eventually went back for x-rays to confirm what we already knew, and there was a lot of waiting. I was discharged around 11 p.m. with a fresh pair of crutches, directions to go to a podiatrist asap, and a prescription for acetaminophen/codeine.6
Rachel took me to Wendy’s, where I ordered (what else), a spicy chicken combo with a lemonade. I crutched into my house, my head spinning and trying to come to grips of how my plans for the next several months had dramatically changed in the past four hours.
To put the cherry on top of everything, when I rested my crutches on the edge of my tub when I was using the bathroom and getting ready for bed, the weight of the crutches managed to knock the shower curtain rod out of tension and it fell on my head.
Needless to say I went to bed without showering that night.
While I was originally quoted about six to eight weeks before I’d be back to normal, my body had other plans. At the end of February — week five, and feeling great — I was informed by my podiatrist that my body had simply not healed in the slightest and it was if I had broken it the day before. Pub shows and Nationals were not going to happen that year.
I’ve written before about how this news impacted my mental state7, and I’m not kidding when I say there were many days where I would not have left my bed if not for my cats asking to be fed. I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced this level of rock bottom before. I was doing everything correctly, following the doctor’s orders, and was just not getting better.
Things were not all bad, though. My dance friends came together to make me a meal train and would pop in to check up on me, and I’m still so touched by their generosity. Three of my friends in the Irish dance world broke their fifth metatarsals around the same time I did, and we made a group chat of “Metatarsal Sisters” to share our frustrations and update each other on the healing process.
After about a week and a half of crutches frustration/pain, I switched to the “iWalk Hands-Free Crutch,” which was a 10/10 on both the “looks ridiculous” and “is super useful” scales. Wearing it in public was awkward and evoked plenty of stares, but it enabled me to actually be able to use my hands and go grocery shopping.
By the end of March, I was showing signs of healing and was given permission to clomp about in the boot at home. I literally and figuratively ran with this new guideline. By April I had eschewed the iWalk completely, and used a mobility scooter during a trip to California. I matched with R2-D2. It was fun.
Shortly after that trip to California, the Kavanagh Porter Academy (KPA), another Irish dance school, announced on Instagram that they would soon be starting classes at a location just minutes from my house. Long story short, I decided to transfer schools — which came with a six-month competition ban and a heck of a lot of questions.
On paper, this move made little sense. KPA did not have an adult program, was mostly teenagers and preteens, and has approximately a zillion dancers at locations around the United States and Ireland. It’s not that I’d be a small fish in a big pond — I’d be a phytoplankton in a vast ocean of national champions and regional titleholders.8
But I needed a change. And if there’s one thing that being bedridden and forcibly removed from your favorite thing in the world for months on end forces you to do, it’s to really think things over. While I loved (and still do) the people at my old dance school, it was becoming clearer the more I thought about things that it was not quite the fit I was looking for.
And with the sudden forced realization that my dancing days are absolutely not guaranteed, there was really no compelling reason to stay where I was. So, I switched.
On May 13, the fourth anniversary of my dad’s death, I got the OK from my doctor to take the boot off. The lineup of those dates was weirdly reassuring that maybe things were going be okay.
Physical therapy was rough. My first session, I nearly toppled over trying to stand on one foot, and it was frustrating to realize that I had a lot of ground to make up. I was convinced that the hard work that I had put in over the last year had evaporated.
This is already getting to be way too long of a post.
Speed Round: Eminem dropped his song Houdini, and I took that as my sign that I should start my comeback too.9 I wasn’t allowed to dance full out in dance shoes until July, and my stamina was that of someone who had done minimal exercise in the previous six months.
Despite all of these factors, there was something about KPA that seemed to click with me. Maybe it was being surrounded by some of the most driven people I’ve ever met, or the realization after a few weeks that the warmup and drills no longer made me feel like I was about to die10, but I had a new confidence to my dancing.
My six month competition ban expired at the end of October. I had some decidedly mid results at the local competitions I competed in, but I didn’t let that bother me. Dancing was FUN again, and I felt so lucky and thankful to be able to get back on stage.
In December, I once again competed at the regional championships. Decked out in a brand new sequined dress, I was smiling from the start of my first round to the final beat of my last. I improved my placement by 13 spots, placing fifteenth — something I thought was impossible just six months before.
If the last year has taught me anything, it’s that nothing can be taken for granted, and if an opportunity arises to change the status quo, you owe it to yourself to at least give it a try. The only person who is certain to be looking out for you is you.
Oh, and that codeine is an opiate. That was a big thing I learned, too.
A big deal for a fully remote employee.
There’s more than this, but this is not an Irish dance substack.
She also gave me an expired-but-still-good Zofran and ordered me to lay down when it became obvious to everyone but me that I was about to pass out.
Pray for them.
My favorite question was “do you have any trouble walking?” which I answered with “when I am not broken, no, but right now when I am, yes.”
Which I did not, at the time, realize is an opiate.
Spoiler alert: poorly
Thank you, Magic School Bus for this vocab word.
Christine’s back, tell a friend. (I hate me too, don’t worry.)
Progress!!!