(originally published in Alternative Medicine Magazine)
Who would have thought that breaking a small bone in my foot would nearly derail my ballet career at the tender age of 20? I certainly didn’t, nor did I figure it would take a village (as the old saying goes) to put me back together again. A fracture of the fifth metatarsal, probably the most common injury in the world of dance (it’s even called the dancer’s fracture), seemed simple enough to fix. My doctor slapped a fracture boot on my foot and told me to stay off it completely for eight weeks. With a few more weeks of rehab, he promised, I’d be good as new. Unfortunately, my case didn’t work that way. Instead, my road to recovery took a grueling 10 months and included many more body parts than just the bone leading to my little toe.
I had been dancing with the Tulsa Ballet Theatre for two years when I fell. At the time, we were rehearsing a triple bill, a show that consists of three short ballets, and I was cast as a soloist in one of them. It was my first opportunity to be highlighted and I was both thrilled and terrified. About a week into rehearsals it happened. I came down from a lift wrong and my foot buckled. There was a horrible snap, and I ended up on the floor. Instantly my foot ballooned and turned violent shades of blue and purple. I knew that I wasn’t getting back up.
The first doctor diagnosed an ankle sprain. I had to convince him that it was actually my foot that hurt. A second X-ray showed the fracture—in my metatarsal. After eight long weeks in the boot, I received a clean bill of health and permission to begin rehab. But every time I’d try to dance, I felt searing pain. I kept telling the physicians that there was something wrong—not with the metatarsal, but with the inside of my foot. It took three weeks before the doctor took me seriously enough to take an X-ray. The X-ray showed an extra bone on the inside of my foot, called an accessory navicular, and immediately the orthopedic surgeon wanted to remove it. I couldn’t imagine spending another six months recovering from the surgery, so I got a second opinion. The second doctor took an MRI: same diagnosis, same treatment. Finally, for a third opinion, I found a surgeon willing to look at alternative options; unfortunately I had to fly all the way to San Francisco to find him. Elizabeth Larkam, a Pilates teacher who had helped me in the past, put me in touch with James Garrick, MD, founder and director of the St. Francis Sports Medicine Clinic and an orthopedic surgeon himself. He and Larkam became the first two indispensable members of my wellness team.
My burning question to Garrick: If an operation couldn’t help me, what could? I still couldn’t dance and I was still in pain. I needed to do something. I met with Garrick at the end of December 2003, almost three months after my injury. He had worked closely with the San Francisco Ballet for a number of years and his experience treating dancers immediately put me at ease. Dancers expect more from their bodies than the average person; he knew I needed to be able to come back from this injury even stronger than I was before. For that reason, Garrick refused to do surgery. However, he told me that my recovery could be as long as nine months and that there was a distinct possibility that I would end up with chronic tendonitis.
After studying the MRI, Garrick helped me devise a treatment plan. He felt my pain was caused by weakness in the tendons and connective tissue around my arch. Without those tendons supporting my arch, there was excessive stress on the extra bone. The key to healing without surgery, he said, was to strengthen all of the soft tissue. His recommendation: Pilates with Larkam five days a week for two months. This wasn’t just ordinary Pilates, however. I was to mimic what I would normally be doing in ballet class but do it lying on my back on the Pilates Reformer, adding resistance slowly as my strength increased. His only caveat: If it hurt, back off. Of course, my goal was to eventually do my exercises upright at the barre.
He then referred me to a podiatrist who fit me for orthodics and gave me a Theraband regimen for my ankle. I finally felt like I was on the true road to recovery. I still needed a few more months before I could return to ballet class, let alone the stage, but at least I was moving in the right direction.
I returned to Tulsa excited, but by the end of March I started to lose steam. I was barely able to make it through a full hour-and-a-half class and I began to worry that I would never get my strength back. This nagging sense of doubt increased tenfold when I tried some exercises in the center, without the barre. Not only was I weak, my balance was shot, especially on my left side. Suddenly I found myself thinking that my career was over before it had ever really begun. If dancing was my life and I could no longer dance, what did I have left? Who was I if I wasn’t a dancer? I didn’t have any answers and came close to giving up.
The depression I experienced began to take a toll on my health. A spring cold quickly turned into acute bronchitis. After a round of antibiotics, I felt fine and went ahead with my planned vacation to New York and Spain. I relapsed in New York. By the time I got to Madrid I had a raging throat infection. The doctor there gave me more antibiotics and I ended up with thrush. None of this served as a wake-up call though. Then a good friend of mine, whom I had been traveling with, received a job offer from the Nacional Compaña de Dansa in Madrid, a company I love. She was dancing. I was sitting on the sidelines. I knew then I had to get back to work.
The first thing I needed to address was my overall health. How could I strengthen my foot enough to dance if I couldn’t get well? I flew back to California where I knew I could get the best care both physically and professionally. But my immune system was already compromised from the series of illnesses and as soon as I landed, my allergies flared up. I was asthmatic and, to add insult to injury, I broke out into rashes and hives; I was totally and completely miserable.
A family friend referred me to Stephen Zilber, Lac, a medical acupuncturist and herbalist in Marin County, the third member of my team. He diagnosed me with leaky gut syndrome, a condition in which my body treated certain types of food as foreign invaders and created an immune response to fight them. Now, in addition to being allergic to pet dander and pollen, I could no longer tolerate dairy, wheat, gluten and citrus. As a lover of cheese, sourdough bread and pasta, I clearly had to make some major changes to my diet.
With diet changes, supplements and the twice-weekly acupuncture, I began to get a handle on my allergies, plus lose the weight I gained from inactivity and inflammation. Feeling better physically helped ignite my determination. I was now ready to focus on my dancing. Finally healthy, I took class every day and that June (2004) I put my pointe shoes on for the first time in nine months. I still felt that I wasn’t getting strong enough fast enough so Larkam continued to coach me in Pilates and I added yoga to my exercise schedule.
Even with all of the work I had done, I was still nervous about going back to work. I was afraid that I had screwed up my big chance and that I was going to have to prove myself all over again. By now, the artistic director had hired six new dancers for the season. What if I no longer measured up?
I needn’t have worried. I was cast once again in a soloist role. Of course going on stage after nearly nine months was terrifying but I made it through. I hadn’t lost my chance to shine in this company after all. I had come back stronger not only physically and technically, but emotionally too. My broken foot may have been a wake-up call, but because I had addressed my entire body’s needs, I found a sense of balance in my system I had never had before.