Things keep getting better.

New video It has been 3 almost months since the screws were removed and exactly 6 months since the injury, and Mia Rose continues to see improvement in her foot and her left leg overall. The general consensus is that you continue to see improvement throughout the first year so she’s at the halfway mark and doing really well. She tapes her arch (to support the whole arch/underside of the foot) and wears an ankle brace for preventive ankle support while at practice and she is now able to do everything she wants without any problems. She still sees some swelling at the end of the day both in the gym and on weekends out and about, but it isn’t bad at all and doesn’t slow her down. She is even able to wear wedge heels when dressed up without a problem.

Now that she’s well into the recovery process she is working some pretty cool new skills in the gym. Here’s her new vault (yurchenko full) that she got to flip onto mats rather than into a foam pit for the first time yesterday. VIDEO I can’t wait to see what it looks like in a few more weeks. She’s working new skills on the other events too but this is the only one I’ve been around to catch on video.

15 weeks post ORIF qualified to States!

floor straddle jump shamrock invite — Part of the jump pass in her floor routine.

I am so pleased to be able to say that Mia Rose qualified for level 9 States in both floor and vault yesterday just 15 weeks after her lisfranc fracture/dislocation and ORIF surgery! Just being able to compete so soon was a huge accomplishment. At the start of the week we weren’t sure that she would be able to compete floor or vault as she had not yet flipped a vault or done a floor routine with tumbling and jumps in it since November 9th, so the fact that they were the events she qualified on is even more remarkable. Bars and beam were the first two events and unfortunately falls prevented her from qualifying on those, but regardless I am amazed by her drive and perseverance which paid off in the end.

VIDEOS: Floor and Vault

one_and_half floor shamrock invite — in the midst of a 1.5 twisting layout.

I am immensely proud of and happy for my girl! She never stopped believing that she could come back from this injury in record time and she put in all of the incredibly hard work necessary to make that happen. She was in the gym training every single thing she could even while 100% non-weight bearing and never let the inevitable sadness and frustration that comes with this long recovery process deter her from her goals and what she needed to do to get there. She is wearing an ankle brace to help support her ankle as a precaution as she comes back from being immobilized for so long. Happily she has no pain in the area of the lisfranc repair, but all muscles in the foot and ankle that were immobilized in a cast and boot for 3.5 months get sore and she still has small limp when walking. Her surgeon and PT told her that some pain is unavoidable when returning to sports and that as

beam shamrock invite — Some beautiful moments on beam despite a fall

long as it doesn’t get above a 4/10 and doesn’t last more than 2 hours after she stops working out that she is fine to work through it. She generally ices after each practice as a matter of course and the pain is gone within 30 minutes or less…so all is well and each day she has a little less. We both look forward to the day when pain is no longer “normal and expected” but it is wonderful that it is not bad and not slowing her down.

bars shamrock invite — Bars was the first event of the day which was stressful and didn’t go as expected but she still had some lovely spots in the routine.

It seems that periods of feeling really down and helpless are inevitable when traveling the long road to recovery from this injury…but having a specific goal in mind and writing down what she needed to do to get there really helped Mia Rose. Intentionally recognizing and appreciating even the tiny signs of progress seemed to help quite a bit especially as time wore on…progress is frustratingly slow with this injury compared to so many more common injuries so it can be hard to believe that you are really improving unless you intentionally notice and appreciate the little things. She still has a way to go before she is back to 100% but now it is easy to see how far she has come and there are big things to celebrate on a regular basis.

She heads back to the gym tomorrow to keep working in the hopes of improving her routines enough over the next 2 weeks to do well at States and qualify for Regionals.

Cleared for return to gymnastics!

20170221_092916 — Standing on high-toe just 13.5 weeks post ORIF. The left foot is the one that was operated on.

Mia Rose had her post-op wound check with her surgeon Monday. It was 13.5 weeks post-ORIF surgery and 11 days after the hardware removal surgery. The incisions look good and with all the poking and twisting that he did to her foot, the only thing that was sore was the new incisions. Based on that and what he saw on x-ray during the hardware removal surgery, she was cleared to start barefoot gymnastics again. That was very happy news! She was told to gradually increase what she does over the course of the next 1-2 weeks with pain as her guide. The doctor told her to expect it to hurt a lot initially, but she is fortunate to have almost no pain and what little she does have is improving with the increased impact activity.

The last competition of the regular season (and her only chance to try to qualify for States this year) is in 2 weeks and she is absolutely determined to try to be ready to compete all-around by then if she possibly can. At the moment both bars and beam are almost competition ready and vault and floor are coming along. She was so happy to have the all clear to really start getting back to doing what she loves-she even seems to be taking the directive to work her way back gradually to heart. I am so proud of her grit, determination and hard work no matter what happens regarding competition!

She doesn’t need to see the surgeon again for two months. She will continue PT through the end of this month and then hopefully that will be far less frequent as well. Getting to the point where we do not have to go to multiple appointments every week will make our lives and her schoolwork so much easier than the past 3.5 months have been!

January 30, 2017: First PT visit without the boot

Today was Mia Rose’s first visit to the PT since she started wearing the sneakers and orthotics. She had a good session, got new exercises to work on her own (squats single leg and two leg, RDLs, big toe exercises to get some of the small muscles in her arch more active etc), and got instruction in how to correct her gait so that she is now walking with much less of a limp. She had been walking in the boot for so long her steps had become short and choppy with a bit of a swing from the hip on the left side. Her PT told her to take longer steps really focusing on squeezing her glutes with each step and leading with the front of her hips. Within just a few seconds that dramatically improved her gait and reduced her limp to almost nothing. I will try to grab video later today to show the difference.

Physically Mia Rose is doing extremely well with her injury healing ahead of the typical timeline. She has little to no pain even when she is up and about doing lots, and the rest of her body is stronger than ever. But, since the purpose of creating this blog is to help others who are traveling this road to recovery from a lisfranc injury, I can’t just talk about what is going so well…I have to acknowledge that mentally and emotionally this has been a grueling process to say the least.

We are both pretty exhausted by the seemingly never ending medical appointments between PT, follow-ups with the surgeon, and visits to the chiropractor to address back pain from being on crutches and then walking in the boot for many weeks. We are typically going to 3 appointments a week to some combination of medical professionals. Both of us are very anxious to get to the point where she will not have such frequent visits! Between the medical visits, her schoolwork, my job, and her practices it feels like we never stop and the injury and recovery process are constantly front and center in our life. After the screws are removed on February 16th, I’m hoping that things will settle down quite a bit in that regard. Although the long term big picture seems to look very positive at this point, in the day to day it can be difficult to stay positive. It is definitely a daily (sometimes hourly especially early on) conscious choice to stay positive and focus on how far she has come in the past 11 weeks. When we look at her progress it is easier to appreciate how well she is doing. We have daily conversations about the little things that are better each day to help us really see and focus on what it good. Early on that was things like going 5 hours without needing a pain killer instead of 4 the day before. Now it is things like being able to dramatically reduce her limp with just a small change from the PT, being able to do one more leg lift or connecting one more skill in her bar routine for the first time since she got injured. I highly recommend doing this as it helps you to focus on the positives that are there but could easily go unnoticed and being able to see progress is so important to knowing that you really are recovering.

All of that said, we continue to take the long view and know that everything she is doing now (and everything she is not doing per doctor’s orders) will ultimately lead to her being fully healed with her foot ready to support her for a lifetime and with her back to the sport she loves while also being stronger than ever. That’s the”sliver lining” that we focus on and are grateful for every day.

January 26, 2017: Shoes!

On Jan 25th Mia Rose had another appointment with the surgeon when we were supposed to pick up her orthotics, but they had not arrived yet.

Her surgeon twisted, bent and poked at her foot even more intensely that two weeks before and again she had no pain at all (sat completely relaxed as he manipulated it), which elicited the remark “amazing” from him…he said it more to himself than to us, but clearly feeling so good and moving so well 10 weeks post surgery is not typical. He then told us we could schedule surgery to remove the screws in 2-3 weeks. We scheduled that for February 16th (exactly 13 weeks after the initial ORIF surgery).

On January 26th her surgeon’s assistant was very kind to bring her orthotics to us, since he lives in our area while the surgeon’s office is nearly an hour from our house. He put the orthotics in her sneakers and said that she should gradually break them in starting with one hour and increasing each day. Here’s a VIDEO of her first steps in a sneaker since the injury on November 9th.

VIDEO: Working her switch leap was the first thing she wanted to do when she got into her shoes…since she takes off and lands on her uninjured foot she was able to do it without a problem.

Although she still has a limp, she’s comfortable in the sneakers and so happy to be moving away from the boot. We’re looking forward to seeing her PT tomorrow.

January 11, 2017: Lots of progress at PT & in the gym

20170117_202523 — The swelling has steadily improved since she began walking in the boot. The left foot is still a bit bigger than the right but it is getting much closer to normal.

January has been a busy month with lots of physical therapy, doctors visits and gymnastics practice.

Mia Rose has gotten most of her skills back on bars and is focused on trying to be ready to compete bars in February. VIDEO In addition to practice where she does bars plus tons of conditioning, she does PT once a week with our fantastic PT who is very well versed in gymnastics, home exercises prescribed by her PT daily, another hour of PT once a week with a trainer and lifts weights several days a week with me. She is really determined to be even stronger than she was before when she is cleared to get back to gymnastics fully.

She saw the surgeon on January 11th and he took more x-rays, which looked good. He also moved her foot around and pushed on the arch a bunch, which happily didn’t hurt her at all. He seemed satisfied with her progress and took molds for custom orthotics for her sneakers at that visit as well. We will be traveling on February 9th and the goal is to have her comfortably walking in her sneakers before then.

December 25, 2016: Christmas Day and testing out walking

20161214_184633 On Christmas Day Mia Rose tried putting weight on her foot for the first time in 6 weeks…and amazingly it did not hurt at all. She was so happy…quite a wonderful Christmas gift. Over the next few days she was able to give up her crutches completely without any pain at all other than irritation to her shin from the top if the boot.

She had her initial physical therapy evaluation two days before and her range of motion and strength were quite good for the circumstances and her PT gave her range of motion exercise to do at home until her next appointment. She was very pleased to be able to move and begin to work on getting her range of motion back.

December 21, 2016: out of the cast and into a boot

20161220_110055 — Out of the cast and after a good scrubbing in the shower. (It looked pretty awful before that.)

At this visit Mia Rose’s cast was removed and she was put into a walking boot, but the doctor told her that she needed to remain non-weight bearing for one more week. After that he told her that she could begin weight bearing in the boot as tolerated. He said that she could walk as much as she could reasonably tolerate. He said that some discomfort was to be expected but intense pain was not. He also said that she could ditch the crutches as soon as she felt ready.

As expected her foot and leg were pretty flaky and in need of a good scrubbing when the cast came off and the atrophy in her calf was pretty extreme as well. She was bummed to see that but looking forward to starting PT to begin to build her strength back up. Despite being a little stiff from being immobilized for 5 weeks, she had pretty good range of motion in her ankle and said it felt really good to be able to move it. The doctor said that she could remove the boot whenever she was sitting to do range of motion exercises.

December 2, 2016: time for a new cast

second-cast — Cast #2 she liked the color much better… the matching toenails were not planned.

Two weeks post surgery Mia Rose saw her surgeon to have the incisions checked and a new cast put on her foot. They took the steri strips off of the incisions (but did not touch or clean them so they looked pretty gross). Her doctor was pleased with the amount of healing that had taken place and there was no sign of infection. Mia Rose was extremely happy to be able to move her ankle for a few minutes between casts and had good range of motion. She was also shocked by how much her calf muscle had atrophied with just two weeks of complete immobilization.

Here’s some VIDEO of the “basics” Mia Rose was able to do on floor to help her keep strong while 100% non weight bearing on her left foot.

Just before this visit she had started to experience periodic “electric shock” sensations in her foot which were both jarring and seemed worrisome to us. It turned out that as miserable as they were, those sensations are very normal as the nerves begin to “wake up as the inflammation goes down. I’m sharing that here, because it is very

20161121_093409 — It’s not pretty but the surgeon says it looks good.

unsettling if you don’t know that it is normal.

November 25, 2016: Getting back to practice

20161116_154641 Despite the fact that she could not walk and needed to be sitting with her foot elevated most of the time to keep the pain under control, Mia Rose was back in the gym doing conditioning and some bars just 5 days after surgery. This video was taken just 8 days after surgery as she was learning how to do bar skills with the weight of a cast on her foot (she put an ankle weight on the other side for balance). After a while on bars the first few weeks she had more discomfort in her foot, but not enough to cause problems, and she would elevate after that by walking on her hands and doing handstands…aka getting her foot as far above her heart as you can get.

Initially she was at the gym for just two hours a day, but within a couple of weeks she was staying for the full practice and started lifting some weights as well. Despite the fact that she still needed a lot of help with every day tasks at home like getting food and drinks and showering, at the gym she was able to feel a little more independent and “normal.” She was absolutely determined not to lose any strength and to be ready to jump right back in to competing as soon as her foot healed (in 4-5 months), so she knew that she needed to put in the time and hard work to stay strong.

As crazy as it sounds all of the time in the gym really helped to keep her sane during a very difficult time. Competing and being at the gym training and working along side her teammates has always been where she is happiest, so that was where she wanted to be as she recovered. In the gym she was able to do something productive and keep her mind on things other than being sad and in pain.

Throughout her recovery she used a combination of the iWalk 2.0 and crutches depending on where she was and what she was doing. The iWalk was great for making it possible to hold things while moving about and helping to keep her quad and glutes active on the left side, but in the first month post surgery she could only use it for short periods because the jostling of her foot would cause increased pain and swelling. In the gym crutches were more functional because of the uneven surfaces and the fact that she could put them down and pick them up quickly.