Arena Rehabbing Sports Injuries

All this talk of Peyton Manning's rehab got me thinking a lot of my own journey through rehabbing an injury. I also get asked a lot why I'm not a horse trainer. The injury has a lot to do with it. Not from nerves or being scared, but from not wanting to be in pain 24/7.

Almost 7 years ago now I took a bad fall off of a horse. We were attempting to jump, horse stopped and I kept going, flying over the jump and landing on a ground pole (a wooden pole that lies on the ground to help the horse know when to take off). I took the brunt of the impact on my left butt check (lol). The force of the fall completely threw my hips out of alignment (they still get that way), essentially making my right leg longer than my left at times. A few inches to the right and I would have busted my tailbone or spine so in retrospect I was lucky to hit where I did, however the resulting years of pain don't make it seem so lucky.

I went to the chiropractor several times a week for the next 4 months in order to be able to continue riding as I'd qualified for Regionals already.

I went off to grad school the following fall and ending up on massive pain killers. Struggled through the week with the pain since the pain killers made me not be able to function. Barely got out of bed on the weekends for about 2 months. I went back to the doctor and told him I couldn't function this way and there had to be something else we could do besides just take drugs. (Weird that I had to talk my doctor into allowing me to try physical therapy, shouldn't that be the first thing?) I attending physical therapy 3 days a week for about 2 months. The therapist told me I had the motion range of a 60 year old (ouch) but he thought I was young enough that we could fix it. After 2 months I had learned enough about the exercises that I could do them on my own and my range of motion was closer to my age at that point so he turned me loose with orders to continue the exercises.

I thought I was fixed.

A few months later I woke up with the worst pain imaginable in my neck. I literally could not move my head without searing pain all down my right side. Luckily I still had a chiropractor and I think my mom was in town so the chiropractor came to see me on her day off and was able to make me a little more comfortable. Had an MRI done soon after to find I have bulging disks in my neck so when I get a little bit out of alignment they hit a nerve thus the pain and numbness down my right side.

I had stopped riding by this point and was miserable. The chiropractor changed how I sleep (many sleepless nights because of this), how I sat in my office, how I drove. At this point I went through depression, thinking I would never be able to ride again the way I used to. People don't get why athletes kill themselves when they get injured. I think I do and I was never a professional.

I had a good mentor who attempted to help me through this part of my recovery. I learned to focus on what I can do and not what I can't do. I also learned that if I rode in a different saddle I could at least ride. So I started building the muscles back up, slowly, but at least I was riding. Now I can do low jumping and ride twice a week without massive amounts of pain. I use a combination of hot/cold therapy on my back and neck. I've discovered that most of the time ice works faster than tylenol if feel my right side starting to get numb or hurt. Heat helps the muscles relax enough for me to do the stretches.

Walking and a stationary bike have also done a lot for me in recent months. I can even run a little bit twice a week without pain. It never ceases to amaze me how interconnected the body is and that targeting where the pain is present is not always the way to go. For my lower back pain it is more important to stretch the back of my legs than anything else.

Anyone else have an injury rehab story?

 

well, while i haven't had a sports related injury i have had to rehab something before. i have mid-corpal instability with hyper-laxity syndrome, which basically means that the ligament and tendons in my hands, wrists and such are far too loose, and when i do something that's repetitive they stick and then snap back into place. while writing longhand my wrist popped so loud that my mom heard it down a hallway and in a closed room. i ended up in a cast for six weeks, and then when that was done i had to rehab it, and work on strengthening my other wrist so i wouldn't have that happen to the other one. it wasn't fun, but it was extremely useful.

as of right now i still have problems with writing like that, taking notes for things and such. if have to do it over any long periods of time, on the order of a month or more, it results in a sort of chronic buildup of pain/wear and i might as well have carpal tunnels until i get some kind of protracted break from anything like that. when i went back to school was... a very painful year. thankfully typing was is something i can do without anywhere near as much pain, so now i take notes on a computer.

while nowhere near as bad as sey's problem it has definitely effected my quality of life.