On May 27th, 2014, I turned sixteen years old. I had the time of my life frolicking around the school with balloons and cupcakes. That time of year is always hectic in terms of my dancing career; we don’t have our regular classes anymore because it’s close to the big show. We have these big rehearsals in a local church basement. They’re once or twice a week and everyone from the studio comes and shows off what they’ve been working on all year. It’s really fun and everyone loves hanging out there. This is why I was more than ecstatic that this church rehearsal fell on my sixteenth birthday. My dance friends all celebrated with me and we planned to go out for dinner afterward. At the time, we weren’t aware how slippery and unsafe the gym-like floors of this church basement were.
I was just standing there, in the middle of the floor -- literally just doing an arm movement. It was during a stupid, simple Mary Poppins dance. My ankle buckled and within a matter of a few seconds, my entire body collapsed over my foot. I tried to get up, but the agonizing pain prevented me from using my legs. My dance teacher panicked and called my parents who took me right to the emergency room. After spending the night there and basically high on pain meds, they concluded I had snapped my fourth and fifth metatarsals in half. They told me I wouldn’t be able to walk without a huge medical boot for six weeks.
Hearing this news, my heart sank. I started crying in front of EVERYONE like a little baby. The recital was in less than two weeks. You honestly don’t understand how much this devastated me. I went to my dance teacher hysterically crying. Out of the twenty six recital dances, I was in fourteen of them. My dance teacher, out of sympathy, assured me she would get me up onstage for a number or two, sitting down in my boot or something. However, this did not satisfy me in the slightest. I worked way too hard for countless months to just sit there and do nothing.
You’re going to tell me this is stupid, but I made the decision to dance anyway. I barely got out of bed for two weeks and didn’t dance in the dress rehearsal or anything. The morning of the show, my parents gave me the strongest pain meds they could find (yes they were legal), and my dance teacher wrapped my foot up as tight as it could be. We even painted the white wrapping with some of my foundation so that it would blend in with my skin!
The curtain opened and with the high I was feeling from all that adrenaline (and meds), I danced straight through for the entire two and a half hours. I didn’t even have enough energy to walk up to my dressing room, so my fellow dancers had to help me quick-change costumes right in the wings. I walked out the stage door in pure astonishment -- did I really just perform fourteen dances with a broken foot?!
My dad said he was so happy for me that he was crying. My family was very worried, but ultimately proud. I was proud of myself too, I guess. When the rest of the audience saw me walking out of the show with my stupid, cumbersome boot, they told me they had no idea I was in any kind of pain.
I wish I could tell you everything was fine and great after that... but I’d certainly be lying. The minute I got home, those freaking meds wore off. I was in so much pain I couldn’t even stand up. My sock wouldn’t even fit on my foot it was that swollen. I basically sat with my foot in an ice bucket for the rest of the week.
My foot is still pretty messed up from that day, a little over two years ago. It aches after walking long distances or during an intense ballet class. Although I continued dancing, I had to abandon my dream of continuing my pointe career...it would just be too much.
For my follow-up x-ray a few weeks later, I was pretty nervous. I went to the children’s hospital and had to lay down in a dark room for a while. The ceiling was painted with tiles that some of the little patients drew, all positive, jubilant, and calming images. The one I was staring at was painted by a little girl that read the word ‘HOPE’ in big pink letters. The O was a smiley face. I started at it the entire time, hoping for the best. Hope is my favorite word and that tile really made me feel better throughout this entire journey. To just have some hope!
