#footamoid

Ah, vacation time! The foot/toe/joint was a bit ache-y on the trip, but nothing out of my new, adjusted version of ordinary. We hiked Angel's Landing at Zion's National Park (awesome, btw) and did other outdoorsy things. It was great, and I really needed the break.

After a short week and many hours of driving later, I was back in the studio. I teach for a few hours on Tuesdays, plus take a two-hour ballet technique class myself. The pain in the bottom of my foot slowly started increasing that day as I taught. By the time I was in my class, I could hardly stand at the barre without clutching it for dear life.

Dancer instinct, much like Dory the fish, says, "Just keep dancing, just keep dancing..." Mine was no different, though this time I added, "Keep it warm, keep it moving," to my mantra.

I didn't last very long.

The pain had turned sharp and brutal. Like a carving knife stabbing into the same spot, just south of my big toe on the ball of my foot, repeatedly. Additionally, I felt the pain pulse outwards medially to the knuckle and joint. I described it to some dancer friends sharing the barre with me as feeling like someone had taken a melon baller to that part of my foot and I was dancing on the bone. My brain thought a few times about nerve pain, but I dismissed it. Nerve pain is one of those weird things I always imagine to be chronic and irreparable, given the nature of nerve regeneration. Even peripheral nerves, though they can heal, take months and months to repair themselves.

I sat down after the barre exercises and iced my foot, which didn't help at all. The pain was so intense, that if I were insured, I would have immediately made an appointment with a doctor for the next day.

Instead, I went through all of May dancing on my hurt foot, teaching, standing at work all month, and doing things normally. It wasn't until all my toes went numb one day in church, and with much persuading from The Boyfriend, that I finally decided to pony up the monies and get this thing looked at.

Enter Dr. G, your friendly neighborhood podiatrist. Paperwork, X-ray, prodding, examining, old injury discovery (he was sure that was the painful area; it wasn't), and a diagnosis. *drumroll* A transverse fracture in the lateral sesamoid bone just under my metatarsals! Aka, broken baby bone exactly where it hurts.

Soft cast, squishy weight redistribution pad, purple wrap, and a killer shoe. Re-do the whole deal once a week, check up on the progress. No dancing, no extended walking, no standing at work, no lifting over 20 lbs. My new new adjusted version of normal.

I've never broken any bones. No, really! I haven't!

Okay, well there was this one time when I got my braces off, then saw that I had two thin lines down the center of my two front teeth. I think those count as hairline fractures... I also routinely have dreams about my molars breaking. Dental trauma aside (dreamt or otherwise), never broken anything. Nope. Just the ol' knee surgery (that's another story - stay focused). I've never been a risky, so really this was never going to happen to me. Broken bones happen to kids who fall off the dangerously tall jungle gym, or people on YouTube actin' a fool.

As they say, "never say..." Well, you know.

It all started with an ankle roll. Yup. Run of the mill for a dancer, really. Land a jump funny, do something stupid, and BOOM! Ankle down! Dancer down! Ice it, soak it, wrap it if it's bad enough, and then brush your hands off and get back in the studio, you wuss.

Preface: my ankles are STRONG. Like, dance on my toes on a regular basis strong. Common knowledge that ballet dancers have ankles of steel given that we work on that always and forever. So again, this never should have happened.

A guest teacher came to teach the advanced class. One of the director's old colleagues from the Professional Ballet Career days. She had hilarious stories and high expectations (remind me to tell you about penche-ing with two boobs imprints in the sand). As we did a pirouette combination across the floor, we were to roll down to ecarte derierre en l'air with our leg up to our ear.

(like this, but with a high leg. also this isn't me->)

Just like that. "Roll through your foot!" she said. "You don't need to plie! What if you were in pointe shoes? With a partner? You simply must have the control yourself!"

Sigh.

Well, that's about when I lost all muscle control in my lower leg. ALL muscle control. It was one of those slow motion-y moments in life, when everything goes to a snail's pace with the sole purpose of capturing every millisecond in your mind so as to scare you for the rest of your life. I felt the outside part of my ankle make contact with our marley floor, and I was a down. Then WOOSH, back to normal time and color my cheeks red! I fell in Kinda a Big Deal Lady's class!

Before you ask, yes, of course I cried.

But only for a minute. Then I was up and at 'em again. Can't let KBDL think I'm a sissy. My director also said he saw the fall, and it wasn't that bad. Translation: get back out there, you're embarrassing me.

And so I danced. And danced. And it hurt for weeks. (Yes, I realize this is my fault.) To compensate, I shifted my weight away from the outside of my foot entirely. In ballet we call this pretty. That's just where you should live, not toward the pinky toe, but more the second and big toe.

Well, when I put my weight somewhere, apparently it's all 800 pounds of the fat girl inside of me that goes there too. Pretty soon that big toe joint started hurting just as the ankle pain was fading. I wore a fuzzy sock to keep it all warm, made it through the Company's spring performance, and quickly went on vacation with The Boyfriend.