It’s no secret that I like sports and adventure. In my last blog post I extolled the virtues of living grain-free in order to have a body more conducive to sport and adventure…basically a leaner body with healthy joints.
Because of my little love affair with sporture (copyright pending on that phrase so don’t you even think about using it) I am pretty much always in pain. Shin splints, sore knees, muscle cramps, tight hamstrings, knots in my back, bruises, scrapes, cuts. You name it, I’m usually feeling it. So, I deal. I love sporture so much that I will live with a fair amount of pain on a fairly regular basis in order to take up pretty much any sport.
Well, yesterday I found out something very interesting about the amount of pain I’ll live with. Rather than summarize, I’ll share the conversation I had with my doctor…it went something like this…
Doc: “So we got the results back from your x-rays. Your tibia and fibula show no fractures so it’s just a soft tissue injury. Stretching is going to be the key to healing and since the muscle running up your shin is so small it will take some time.”
Me (feeling good, one x-ray down, one to go): “Fantastic.”
Doc: “Your shoulder also showed no sign of a fracture other than the previous break in your clavicle…”
Me: “I’m sorry…my what?”
Doc: “The previous break in your clavicle – you know, where you’ve fractured your collarbone before.”
Me (pause): “I did?”
Doc: “Is that a question? Do you not KNOW that you’ve fractured your collarbone?!”
Me: “Um…no.”
Doc: “Darla, how did you not know that you’ve BROKEN your clavicle?!”
Me: “Well, people break bones all the time and don’t know, right? Like toes…don’t people break toes and not realize it?”
Doc: “That’s a toe! This is your collarbone! This is one of the most painful breaks in your body! It can’t be set so it’s extremely painful to recover from. Have you seen those braces people wear when they break their collarbone – the ones with the metal bar from their neck that keeps their shoulders back? That’s because there is no way to set it.”
Me (feeling lucky that I never had to wear THAT monstrosity – I mean there is NO way to make that look sexy): “Like I’ve said…I’ve always played sports and I’ve always gotten injured and I’ve always lived with the pain so I guess when this happened I just thought it was an extra-painful injury I had to recover from. (pause…of reflection) When did I do it? Is it like a tree? Can you just count the rings and tell me how long ago this happened?”
Doc (laughing – at me): “No, you’re not like a tree. I can’t just ‘count your rings.’ You really don’t know when you did it?”
Me: “Well, there are two times I can think of that this might have happened.”
Doc: “If that’s the case it was most likely the second time for two reasons. One, if you broke it on the first time and then hit it again you would have definitely known you had broken it because you probably would have re-broken it. And, two, the first time would have compromised the bone and weakened it and the second time would have broken it.”
After a thorough review of recovery options for both my ailing shin (thanks to an overly-ambitious sprinting workout) and my ailing shoulder (apparently the product of a broken-never-set clavicle reaggravated by overly-ambitious Olympic weightlifting) I hung up.
As I pulled up to the traffic light I recalled the day that will now be known as “The Day I Broke My Clavicle.”
It was a white-out at Snowbird (my home mountain in Utah). My ex-fiance (yup…I had one of those once…that was fun) and I were taking full advantage of the fresh champagne powder falling at a record pace around us. We were coming down the face of the mountain, Ryan sliding in between the trees and me bombing down the open trail. No one else was on the mountain – we had made it up before they closed the road due to an avalanche. It was silent and peaceful and perfect. Carving figure-8 caliber turns into the powder in the near blinding conditions, I peaked over and saw an opening into some sweet trees. Leaning to my right I headed for the mounds of the fresh white stuff stacked up around them. Then…
BAM!
All I remember before I black out is seeing Ryan coming at me at full speed.
I come to as someone is turning me over on the ground – apparently upon impact I had blacked-out, flew 10 feet and landed face-down in waist-deep powder. My whole body hurt, my vision was blurry and my head was pounding. It took a good 20 minutes for me to get up, dig myself out of the tree well I had landed in and crawl slowly down the mountain.
Immediate recovery consisted of shots of Maker’s Mark and pints of Guinness at the apres-ski bar until they opened the road back up for us to return home.
Long term rehab? Well, considering the fact that it continued to dump all night long I was back on the mountain the next day – I don’t care how much I hurt – no one is taking my fresh tracks away from me.
