Mentor Meeting!

Had another amazing mentor meeting with Mrs. Augustine today. She rocks! Today was the first day that I actually was able to explain the full story of how I finally injured myself for the last time to Mrs. Augustine and she suggested that I write out the whole story with all the details on my blog. It is an interesting story for me to tell because I think it sounds way worse than what it felt like at the time, but it is still an important story of how I got to where I am today and why I wanted to do this WISE project in the first place.

So it all started at our national dance competition in NYC. I had been competing all day, I had eight dances done and two more to go. We were doing our big production number to One Short Day from Wicked. The dance was super cute and super fun, but not a whole lot of hard dancing. At the end of the song the "gatekeeper of Oz" jumps out and says "THE WIZARD WILL SEE YOU NOW!". It is the last second of the dance and I was chosen to do a round-off-back tuck (a back flip) as the grand finale of the song. I have done this skill a million times and it isn't a hard skill for me and I barely have to think to do it, but body just remembers how to do it. The whole dance was in high heel shoes (which was painful on an already hurting ankle), and right before my trick I ran off stage, ripped my shoes off, then ran back on stage to do the tumbling pass. Taking the shoes of went smoothly but as I took off for the back tuck I knew something wasn't right. I knew I wasn't going to make the rotation all the way around so I got my hands ready to catch me. And when I landed that is when I felt the pop. It was bad, and when I say bad I mean BAD. I have dealt with a lot of pain before but that was the worst pain I have ever endured but I somehow managed to finish the last 2 seconds of the dance (which was a pose on the floor). Next thing I know the rest of my team had gotten up and started to exit the stage, but I just sat there knowing that I could not get up. Some of the older girls on my team realized something was seriously wrong. They have seen my fall so many times and get hurt and hop right back up, so I guess when they saw that I wasn't getting up they knew something serious happened. One of the back stage helpers ended up coming to carry me off the stage. The competition director and a doctor came over to see me and asked me if I wanted my mom. And all I remember saying is "No she is going to be mad!" I was afraid she was going to be mad that I got hurt... I don't know why I thought that but it made sense at the time! So I am sitting there with a huge bag of ice, in more pain than I have ever been in before and all I am thinking is "I have to get ready for my last dance!" It was another big group dance, this time a ballet and I still hadn't realized that there was no way I was getting up again. My team managed to redo the dance without me in it (which is still extremely impressive to me) and place very well! The rest of the night is kind of a blur. I remember getting back to the hotel and just wanting to sleep. I took a nap and a shower and then instead of going out to eat like we had planned, my whole team piled into my room and we watched the gymnastics Olympic Trials on TV. It was a crazy couple of minutes until I realized what happened, and looking back at it I still can't believe that it actually happened to me!