The Story Behind the Scars

One thing I am very passionate about and will definitely post on often is alternatives to Western medical practices (drugs/surgeries). I’m going to tell the story of why this is such an important topic to me and so relevant in my life.

I fell in love with gymnastics when I was 3 and when I was 7, I started competing. I loved gymnastics and I was pretty good at it. I was in the gym three days a week, three hours each day from ages 5-9 and then it increased to sixteen hours a week instead of nine. Eventually my knee started to hurt frequently. It got to the point where I couldn’t walk, never mind run, without bursting into tears. As you can imagine, this limited my ability to do gymnastics. Eventually, when I could no longer manage to do hardly anything at the gym, my coaches and mom decided it was time for me to see a doctor.

Picture from a gymnastics competition before any of my surgeries

I went to an orthopedic doctor and, as my mom tells it, he knew what was wrong just from watching me walk. After moving my leg around and asking me some questions, he explained that I had developed a rare disease called Legg-Calve-Perthes Disease. This defect stops the blood flow to the bone, causing the bone to die and stop growing (maybe that’s why I’m so short). They told me that this disease was most common in boys, in those diagnosed it's a 4:1 ratio of boys to girls. However, they didn't mention that what happens next would shape my life and be part of me forever.

The Surgeries

I had my first surgery that same year, when I was 7. They reshaped the femoral head and put screws and a plate in to help hold everything in place as an attempt to repair the damage. I believe this was as successful as they had planned.

Surgery #2 was the next year, 4th grade. They just removed the hardware that was put in there the previous year so that everything could heal back together fully. It’s common for the metal to cause problems and lead to more pain down the road so they didn’t want to leave it in for long.

Picture of me in the hospital after the second surgery

The third surgery was when I was 12. I had been doing gymnastics again throughout the four years between surgeries since the doctors had told me it would be fine to go back to it. I was now level 8 and had just won first place on beam at regionals. I was having a lottt of pain again and ended up going back in for x-rays and an MRI. From this they found that I had a small fracture in my hip. During this operation they had to surgically dislocate my hip so they could repair the fracture as well as reshape the femoral head again, leaving it at the smallest possible size it can be without causing it to be too small and weak to support me. This was the most major of all the surgeries and left me on the couch for a month and a half and with crutches for an extra month after that. I was back in the gym within three months, doing upper body workouts and hoping to be able to bounce back again. I began to learn all of my skills on my left leg to give my right hip a break once it had healed. 

The fourth (and hopefully final) surgery was the next year. It was freshman year of highschool. The pain I was feeling at this point was thought to just be the aftermath of all the trauma my hip had been through. I was taking pain medicine every day but they weren't any help. Masking the pain doesn’t solve the problem. Doctors said my only option at this point was to try cortisone shots. My mom and I, not knowing any better, agreed to the steroid injection because we trusted that the doctors knew what was best. These shots are supposed to provide relief for 4-6 months but I didn’t feel better for even a day. We got opinions from multiple different doctors and finally one decided to do an MRI. The jagged surface of my femoral head had acted like a saw and cut my cartilage apart leaving me with a labral tear. So surgery #4 was to repair this as well as to remove the screws that they had put in the year before. This surgery was arthroscopic which just means that they used a camera to see inside instead of opening the whole side of my thigh. After this one they told me that they can't do any more surgeries unless it is a hip replacement because anymore could cause my bones to weaken further and crumble. I was 14 years old and my main goal in life became to preserve my hip so that I wouldn't have to have it replaced in my twenties.

My x-ray after the third surgery

I quit gymnastics when I was 13, for my body’s sake, but the sport will always have my heart. Gymnastics wasn't the cause of this for me, it's what made me strong enough to recover quickly from each operation. After the most recent surgery, I was still having pain for a few years. I always disregarded it, figuring it was just a result of all the damage that my hip endured. I was still in pain every day, even after the four operations, plenty of pain / anti-inflammatory pills, endless physical therapy, massage therapy, and extremely limited physical activity. Finally, my mom heard about the miracle healing that was being preformed by chiropractors. We began to explore the world of natural healing and Eastern medicine which gave me a glimpse of hope for the first time in seven years. I began going to an acupuncturist which helped immensely. You can read about my experience with that here. However it was the chiropractor I saw that really turned my life around. I don’t know for how long this was the issue, but the practitioner I went to discovered that I had bursitis in my hip. The bursa is padding between the bone and muscles, mine was inflamed and that was essentially what was still making my everyday life miserable. Once this issue was addressed with electric stimulation my pain pretty much dissipated after just a few weeks of this treatment.

Picture from regionals, my last meet ever 

Don’t get me wrong, there are many situations that require surgery and I’m not mad that I had the surgeries I had. This experience just led me to being much more passionate about natural healing methods and I absolutely think that these should be used over Western medicine methods if it is reasonable or possible for the situation. I think it’s important for people to know their options other than pain killers and surgery because oftentimes things like acupuncture and chiropractic treatments could be much more productive and beneficial.

The scars!