Crutch Crew

Okay, Okay, I know I'm a day late. The last two weeks have been super super hectic and crazy. I guess I didn't realize exactly HOW busy it's been until I was reminded that it was "blog day" and I didn't have one completely finished and ready to go... I typically have a few posts sitting in the queue ready to drop, but this summer has just got away from me and has been a little busier than I expected. Hopefully, I will be able to catch back up soon... anyways, let's get to it!

What is the crutch crew? Well, you know how I mentioned about summer being super hectic and crazy.. well the crutch crew would be not one, but BOTH of my children on crutches at the same time. While it was super comical when we went out in public, people stared at us and I can only imagine they were thinking "Wow, does this woman beat her children, they're both on crutches"... well, as crazy as they make me sometimes... No, I don't hahaha. However, they were both crutched at the same time, so I told them I had to give them a nickname... because I'm an obnoxious mom like that hahaha.

*Said in the infamous meme voice* So, you might be wondering how we ended up here"... I think I briefly mentioned in a previous post that Kamdyn had injured her ankle the day before we left for our trip... if I didn't and I'm just dreaming I told you all, well.... she injured her ankle the day before we left for Vacation. She was WALKING (yes just walking) on a trampoline and *POP* went her ankle. She could hardly walk on it. It was evening time and we left for our flight super early the next morning so we didn't have time to go to the doctor. I knew what a sprain was since I had dealt with one myself, so I just followed my previous course of treatment of R.I.C.E and we pulled out my old braces and boots to give her some stability while we were on our trip. I knew we needed her to heal as quickly as possible since she had such a big week coming up following our vacation.

While on vacation, she did get to where she was able to walk and the swelling went down slightly (not completely), but the bruising started to work its way up, so I knew she had torn something (obviously I had no way of telling how bad of a tear it was, as I'm not a MRI machine). She took it fairly easy on our trip, minus a little bit of hiking. I was hopeful she would be able to pull through for her next big week at Tremaine Nationals in Florida.

Fast forward to when we come home from our vacation, her foot is still bothering her some (I'm still making her nurse it as much as possible), but she is bound and determined to go to Tremaine and compete. I worried about her solos, duet, and trio that she was competing. I knew her sprain was on her turning foot. We did do a trial run the day before she was scheduled to fly out to Florida (I was not going with her and I wanted her to see if she was even capable of dancing since she hadn't danced for a solid two weeks trying to heal). She decided to run her solos and the trio one day at the studio. She was able to do it (and I thought she looked great as always) but she did have to modify a few things in her solos. She's pretty good about doing that. Some tricks and leaps she wasn't able to do because she either had to land of launch or bend her foot in ways that cause her pain, so she made some alterations and made it work. She talked to her duet partner and they decided they would work on making changes to the duet later once they were together (they are both pretty adaptable dancers). I told Kam that when she's at the competition, even if she was backstage, up next.. if she didn't feel confident and like she could do her absolute best, not to push herself, to just walk away. I didn't want her hurting herself further or not feeling her best about her performance. Plus she had a super long week full of dancing, so I didn't want her to jeopardize that for 2 minutes on stage.

Well if most of you haven't caught on, my daughter is bull-headed sometimes, especially when it comes to her dance. Well, she went on stage and did her first solo, which was a pretty fast Jazz dance. I watched the live stream and I thought she looked so great! Especially knowing what she was dealing with, you couldn't even tell. I was so proud of her, and I was also hopeful she was feeling better because she looked great! ... Well when I talked to her and her coach after she came off stage, they told me she was hurting badly. That made me super sad for her. I told her to just RICE and stay off it. We told her her focus needed to just be healing so she could be in tip-top shape for her season. This was just an optional competition just for fun. We talked to her about just sitting out in class, taking notes, and doing arms full out..that way she was still learning from the greats, but not putting strain on her ankle. She had a few days before she competed again. She went back on stage a few days later to do her trio, and again the girls looked FANTASTIC! but once she came off stage from that, we had to make the call and pull her other dances from the competition.. we told her she can't dance anymore until she held and that we were pulling everything from the competition. She was not happy with us because she wanted to push through and finish out with her other solo and her duet. That was such a hard call to make and we hated doing that to her, but it needed to be done. She also had to miss her auditions for TPC. That was tough on her. Myself and one of our dance teachers who were close with (shout out to Ms. Katy) was on a call with kamdyn and she was in the hotel room and just so upset and sobbing. Her foot was hurting her and collectively we made to all to skip the auditions. She had been gearing up for it all season. It was a hard blow. We told her to just enjoy the time alone in the hotel room (the other girls had gone to auditions, and they were so sweet about it. I could hear them being so supportive of Kamdyn on their way out and telling her they love her. Her team really is the best). I told her to just take a long bath with some Epsom salt, rest, and relax. There is always next year to audition. The rest of the week was hard for her as we were all pretty strict with her about not dancing, not even in the classes. She had to just sit and watch and observe. I told her as soon as she gets back from Florida, we were going to the Doctor to get a referral for PT to start rehab for her ankle.

**Note, she still got 2nd and 3rd place!**

Ok, so rewind to the weekend after we got back from our vacation and just 3 days before Kamdyn goes to Florida. My son had a gym meet. He went and did his thing, but on the last day, he said he landed a little wrong and tweaked his foot a little bit. When he came on that Sunday, he had a slight limp, nothing too crazy. I asked him what happened and he said, "Ah I landed wrong and hurt my foot a little". I told him he probably tweaked it a little and we will watch it. After all, he was moving fine just with a slight limp. Every day I would ask him how his foot was doing..his response was always "eh" with a slight shoulder shrug... which in Brozden's language means " eh not too bad but it's whatever". I told his coach he tweaked his ankle a bit at the meet so we were going to keep him home from Monday practice just to give it a little rest. I had him take some ibuprofen and ice it. His foot never really swelled, never really bruised, so I was thinking it wasn't too much of a big deal but found it slightly humorous that both my kids had hurt feet at the same time. I asked him again for details on what he did and he said he landed wrong on the floor... but then continued on to do stuff on the floor and the trampoline since it wasn't bothering him that much.

One night, after not really seeing improvement in his limp, I decided to take a closer look at this foot. I happen to look at the bottom of her foot and there was some strange bruising showing up, and I felt an odd lump on the side of his foot. I then started to get a little more worried. So I texted Dad (since he was at work) and told him I think we need to take Brozden to the doctor. I think his foot might be broken.

I already had an appointment scheduled for kamdyn for when she returned (the Tuesday after she got home), she was supposed to come home on Wednesday, but we decided not to wait and we got them both in that Friday to the walk-in. So Dad takes them both for the walk in and the doctor takes X-rays of both of them, examines them both, and talks about WHAT happened. She decided to put them both on crutches and goes with sprains for both diagnoses.

Well we already had one set of crutches and kamdyn was using those, so we needed to get one more set. I was watching their charts for the posting of the X-rays because I just had that feeling in the bottom of my stomach that something was more... well turns out Brozdens foot WAS broken!! So I call him and told him to get off his foot and that it was broken. He was pretty surprised. I then talk to the doctor's office and they had him come get fitted for a soft air boot and got him on crutches immediately and scheduled an appointment with the orthopedic surgeon (the same one I had to use for my ankle). It was going to be a week until we could get in. Which would be almost 2 weeks post-break.

Introducing the Crutch crew. Members Gimp 1 and Gimp 2 hahahaha.

We needed to do some school clothes shopping. Brozden and I decided to sit down and let him rest his foot a bit while Kam and dad went to some other stores and a random gentleman came up to me and said "What is it with kids in Arkansas being on crutches, this kid is the third I've seen so far",... my response was " well two of them are mine! lol". I told Brozden he probably thought I bet you guys hahaha.

While we had a great day shopping, I could tell he was exhausted from using the crutches because he had to be 100% nonweight bearing. Kamdyn was still on crutches, but this also wasn't her first time so he was good. This was Brozdens the first time on them.

I was also a little frustrated that the doctor didn't give her a referral for PT. So I called her regular doctor and talked to him and he got her right in for PT and it has worked wonders. She's about a month and a half post-injury and is back to dancing, and is off the crutches. While her strength and stability is not where it was pre-injury, it's getting there. Her pain is gone, and all the bruising and swelling is gone. Her stability, strength, and flexibility will come back over time. She has the best PT that are working with her and she's fully on the road to recovery! Yay!

Brozden is on his way to recovery and is off crutches and weaning out of the boot now. He has a follow-up next week to check and make sure it is all the way healed and if it is, he can get back to full training. He's just been lifting weights in the barn so he doesn't lose all his strength. He hasn't been able to go to team practices all summer and has been missing it.

So fingers crossed, next Monday we will officially close the chapter of the Crutch Crew, as funny as it was, I'm ready for my kids to get back to normal and doing what they love. Now we are gearing up for school., Their first day is tomorrow! Ah! Summer is over already!

Well, that is all for now! I have to get back to my crazy life and get my life back in order and caught up on everything!

-Rothrock Mom