There's a first for everything

Today was one of the most frustrating practices ever for me. I've pulled things and pushed muscles to fatigue. There have been bruises and self-medicating of ice and ibuprofen. Yet, I'd never been injured while on the track. I guess there's a first for everything.

First of all, I'm mostly okay. I'm a little battered and I'm going to stop putting off seeing my chiropractor until "later". Most importantly I didn't break anything except maybe my pride. There were no trips to the hospital and no more than ice and ibuprofen. I just ended up sitting out for half of practice.

We started with dry land which, even though it's really hard and I have to keep thinking of something else so my brain doesn't psych me out, I actually enjoy. It's becoming easier to see the importance of dry land. My body is feeling stronger every time we do it and skating is becoming easier. It still wears me out but that means I'm trying hard enough.

After dry land, we got into our gear. I'm proud to say that I can get into gear rather quickly. This is probably from years of always running behind when trying to get somewhere. I've learned how to do things correctly in a short amount of time. We were going to be doing the same sort of skating warm-up we did the week before. I was both excited and dreading it. My inner right thigh felt tight and I was tired from the dry land but I wasn't going to give up. We started skating at 60% and then going into a snowplow when the whistle blew. Once everyone had stopped, we'd sprint back up to going 60%.

Once we'd completed doing that few times, our coach had us skating and then turning around on a whistle and skating backwards. On the next whistle, we'd turn back around and skate forwards again. Going from back to front is fairly easy for me. Going from front to back has become some sort of warfare with myself. I hear the whistle and try to immediately turn around, only to fall down as I'm going faster than I can actually go while turning around. I end up thinking too hard and panicking because I want to do it with everyone else. It was easy to realize what I was doing. So the next time we were to turn around, I thought "step, step, step" to ready myself for the 3 point turn around. I nearly got it. The next time, it got me.

I had taken the first step and was in the middle of the second one when things suddenly changed very quickly. I'm almost positive that the problem was that I had shifted my weight too far back and lost my balance. I blame this on thinking. I was thinking too hard instead of actively engaging my core. As I was in the midst of turning and leaning backwards,  I fell on my backside. Specifically, I hit my right hip/cheek area full force. Somehow I managed to roll onto my left side and I know that my right wrist also made contact with the ground. In those few seconds, I felt a huge jolt race up my spine. As I was there on the ground, I realized I was in too much pain to get back up. Part of me wishes there had been a camera there so I could have seen what happened.

So there I am, sort of kneeling but mostly leaning on my left side with my face down feeling like I've got whiplash. I'm actively crying, not just tears of pain but crying because it really, really hurt. My neck was in intense pain. I refused to move or look up, though I was able to recognize people by skates and voices. I know enough that moving someone with a head or neck injury can be really dangerous and I didn't know what damage I'd done. It felt like I'd just sent a jolt through my system but I don't have any medical training so I wasn't sure. I do remember hearing everyone stop skating as I was down on the ground.

Our main practice area is in basically an arena space. There's a black curtain that comes down during shows and bouts that hides the backstage area which also has a full size track. During practice, the curtain is raised and will do group laps on the outside of both tracks. This makes sense in my head because I skate it all the time. I mention it because our coach who was running warm-ups (Tiki) had everyone move to the front track only to complete warm-ups.

While everyone else got to skate, I was helped onto my back and my neck was checked out. I was asked what happened and I seem to remember saying that I fell on my ass a lot. This was really funny to me for some reason. Probably trying to distract myself from the pain and the worry that I'd done some serious damage. I had almost full range of motion in my neck and no numbness. My skates were taken off for me and ice was given to me. I was then helped over to where our gear bags were and got to fill out an accident report.

In my job, sometimes performers, patrons or workers (in that order) get hurt. When they do, and I'm the one in charge, I get to fill out the accident report. Today is the first time that someone filled it out for me. Sure, nurses or intake people have filled them out for me before but this was different. This was while still at the scene of the "crime". While copies were being made (it's never safe to use the last accident report; that's just begging for more people to get hurt), lots of people checked in with me to see if I was okay. I was embarrassed and frustrated. We'd only just gotten on skates. One of the other skaters told me that she understood and said at least I didn't break myself. She's just gotten back to scrimmaging after breaking herself. Once the sheet was filled out, I was told that I didn't have to stay as the person filling out knew I'd rather be on skates but that I was more than welcome to watch. I decided to stay and watch my group work on things.

I learned a lot.

I learned that none of us really know what we look like when we skate. I saw fellow skaters bobbing up and down when they probably thought they weren't. There were skaters who needed stiffer arms while doing shopping carts. And nearly everyone could have bent their knees more.

I learned that it's hard to sit and just watch. It doesn't matter how hard the drill is, everyone would rather be skating than injured. Everyone cheered when I came over and sat with them but I was sad that I couldn't be skating with them. It was hard knowing that they were getting stronger while I was forced to sit on the side.

I learned that I'm getting much better about how I'm taking things. One of my friends told me, very excitedly, that she had been asked if she felt comfortable enough to move up to the contact group. In the past, I would have been sad right away and I was a bit sad mostly because I know how many practices I can make of what we have left and I know it's unrealistic to make it to that group myself this session. The biggest difference is that I wouldn't have been as supportive as I was today. I'd have pouted and been focused on myself instead of their good news. I'm glad I'm not where I was emotionally a year ago. This is such a better place.

So a lot of ice and ibuprofen later, I'm writing this all down. Not because I'll forget this injury but because it's important to me to remember how I'm feeling emotionally (I'm working on not being hard on myself; I've done worse to my neck in my sleep) and the huge amount of support I got from my team mates. I don't know if they realize how much it means to have them concerned for me. The coaches checking in and my team mates being so concerned once again reminded me of how special this sport is and how lucky I am to be involved in it. It's a competitive sport but there's so much support for each other. This is yet another reason why I'm so happy to have discovered and be involved with roller derby.