September 2015 - December 2015 Training and Rehab

By the end of August, 2015, after six months of rehab and 6 months in a cast or splint, my right wrist had gained enough flexibility to swing p bars and pommel. For a long time I couldn't swing p bars without my right elbow bending once I reached the end of my wrist flexibility. The way through this was physio, acupuncture, chiropractor, massage therapy, daily physio exercises at home and a watchful coach at the gym. Mada would cue me if I bent my elbow once I had enough flexibility to keep it straight. Before that point, I couldn't keep it straight if I tried and it became a bit of a habit. Mada also had me wear an upper arm band at the elbow with a stick in it to remind me mid swing. That really worked. I only needed it about a week, then could do my diamidovs again without bending at the elbow.

August was a time of getting back lots of old skills and even working on new. Tkatchev, double layout and stoop 1/2 came back on high bar and I even started some new releases, twisting dismounts, quast, and other fun skills. Soon I would be able to start into routines for the coming season.

September 4th, 2015, my first day starting tippelt on p bars after 14 mos off that skill, I smashed both big toes on bail and ripped the nails out of the nail-beds. OUCH! Sadly, the emergency doc. missed the fracture in the right toe that happened right then, and focused on replacing the nail. I could barely walk the next week so I focused on conditioning and swinging events. It took 2 months to feel normal to run and vault or tumble again. That made sense once we learned in December that there had originally been a fracture September 4th.

My feet were just feeling normal November 10th when I got a staph infection in the right (damaged) toenail. 3 emergency visits, 2 antibiotics, a bone scan and 6 weeks later, the infection finally had passed and we knew that it did not enter the bone, but that there had originally been a fracture there. One thing after another!

Time to get back to routines. Pommel, Parallel Bars, High Bar, Vault and Rings were feeling more and more solid at this point. I still felt a bit off on floor. Also my right wrist had started to get sore through all the support events. I had a follow up with Dr Monument and new CT Scan to ensure the bones were fine. Everything was better than fine! The bone had actually gotten more dense and strong as I loaded it more and had lost none of its height. Now I was having muscle soreness as the tissues got used to gymnastics again.

That was a big relief, but I was still frustrated with all the stretching, heat and ice, physio and all that was needed just to keep me doing basic pommel and p bars (the events that need the most wrist extension). It was encouraging to know that Nile Wilson, senior gymnast from U.K., whom I trained with in 2014 and had wrist surgery just before mine, was experiencing some of the same challenges. The solution would be to balance more leg events with hand. The problem was, all fall (September through November), I was off the leg events. Some things you just can't control!

December 29th, my first week back tumbling skills on floor, I fell on a 2 1/2 twisting back layout punch front and jammed my ankle. The hospital diagnosed a buckle fracture of two metatarsals so I was put in an air cast. This was a huge disappointment 2 weeks before my first National Qualifier, but health comes first and I needed to heal. As it turned out, at 4 weeks the surgeon re x-ray'd and saw no fracture - he said he had over treated. Well, now I had some muscle loss and a stiff Achilles from the cast, but the sprain I had from the fall had had a chance to heal and soon I would be good to go. 

It is hard to stay positive in your sport while you are growing, having injuries or working through rehab. You need to remember why you started your sport in the first place, your dreams and goals. Also remember that other people are going through hard things too and you can get strength from them. You can always get stronger or better at something while you are recovering from an injury. And, if you have faith in God as I do, you know that something better is coming and He will give you strength to get through this temporary set back. 

vault practice with cast

double full

triple twist from whip while casted

Front layout, front layout 2 1/2

Rehab and Recovery November 2014- September 2015

Starting day 4 post-surgery, November 23rd, 2014, I was allowed to do trampoline, fast track, ‘sweat’ condition, leg conditioning, run, with the clunky blue cast. Two weeks post-surgery I had the cast changed to a lighter weight red cast that I would keep until the end of January, 2015.

I was free to do all I could at the gym, wearing the cast of course. That meant a lot of conditioning, running, vaulting over the table into the pit and fast track work.

I knew I had a follow up MRI in January to see if the bone graft achieved a blood supply and that this was the biggest hurdle as the capitate bone does not have a large blood supply, but Dr. Monument and I were not worried. I was eating healthy, resting and staying active at the gym, all things that boded well for great success in bone formation. He also wanted to see if the bone would keep the new height he had achieved in surgery (about 19mm). Both of those goals were attainable I thought!  Other capitate bone replacements around the world were unsuccessful because of a failure to obtain a blood supply, but I was not worried at all. I had no pain in the wrist/cast, I was running, tumbling, conditioning and training 22-24 hours per week throughout the whole post-surgery period and I was a young growing kid!

In the three months I was casted or splinted, plus the one month being splinted before the November surgery, I was able to really work on my fast track tumbling and vault run. I had no wrist pain at all.  I learned many new skills during this time including whip triple twist, whip double full, front layout double front tuck, front layout 2 ½ twist, whip 1 ½ twist to front layout 1 ½ twist and lots more. It was great to keep learning skills even though I had a cast on.

Flexibility was pretty easy to keep up though I had to be creative for bridge stretch over a pommel. 

Pommel was a little tough to keep going on without arms, but I hooked up two slings and would do pommel circles that way. 

I kept up 24 hours per week conditioning, running, vault runs, trampoline and fast track until I saw Dr. Monument for the January MRI assessment. This was the critical appointment. Did the bone graft take? 

The news about the MRI was fantastic! Dr. Monument was thrilled tell us that the capitate replacement was a success!  He came running out of surgery from another patient, down the hall to see me and right away pulled my MRI up on a computer show me! He was so excited to show a full blood supply on that new bone made completely from bone marrow and my stem cells. He said the bone graft is healing extremely well and has blood supply. !!!!! YAY!!! This is beyond expectations. Also, he said there was no sign of a cyst returning at all. The first time a full capitate replacement succeeded in getting a full blood supply! Nice to be in the record books!

 After 9 long weeks, the cast could come off and be replaced with a splint for another month. Soon I could start range of motion exercises with my physiotherapist, Nicole Hunter, for the wrist.

Even more good news, the MRI showed no sign of the cyst returning. Dr. Monument will keep following up with CT Scans and other tests to keep an eye on it, but it looks like I’m tumor free and on the road back to full use of my hand and wrist!

The next months would be slowly gaining range of motion (once that was at 80% I could start strengthening the wrist), then strengthening the wrist, finally putting weight on my wrist, first with grip (rings, high bar, p bars), then with flat hand (pommel, floor, vault). This would take a long long time because the wrist and whole arm had to get strong again. Every week I was making milestones, so it was good times!

 Simple things like my first handstand on rings, first giant on cheat straps then on real high bar, first swings on p bars, were all big events for me. Parallel bars came really slowly because my wrist lacked axial deviation (flexibility) after so long splinted, casted and with me growing during that time. My physiotherapist, massage therapist, acupuncturist, chiropractor and coaches never gave up. We all kept working to get more mobility in my wrist and still do to this day 17 months post-surgery. At the same time Dr. Monument followed up every other week to ensure the bone graft continued to heal (there was a mushy bit at the bottom that he said might never solidify, but it actually did  in August 2015!!!) and mobility increased.

It wasn’t til June 1^st that I was cleared to start flat hand loading. I slowly did little bits of pommel horse (mushroom) after that, some vaulting and tumbling using my hands. By July I was pretty much back on 5 events and slowly doing bits of the 6^th, pommel horse. I could see gains every week. I also was invited to the national superstar camp in Toronto, Ontario, coinciding with the Pan Am Games. This was an awesome experience to be back with my teammates from across the country and watch our senior team members compete at the Pan Am Games. 

I could also see that some things had actually gotten better since the surgery and long break from support work at the gym. I always had trouble with the technique in double layout dismount from high bar. My first attempts post-surgery, the technique was better and soon I was twisting and even landing double twisting double layouts! Some things were super frustrating like tkatchev that I felt like I had to re learn yet again! My vault run and power was definitely better…soon I was twisting my tsuk layout and even landing a double twist on soft.  My rings quickly became stronger with yamawaki jonosson and giants coming easier and more solid. There are always so many pluses to an injury. They are hard to see in the moment, but later, you can see how you became stronger in different ways.

More work on p bars and pommel did start to give me some wrist soreness, but not too much.  The good news is that with all that loading, new scans showed the bone graft was actually gaining strength and density and had not lost  1 mm of height since the original surgery! By early fall, 2015, I was back on all 6 events and starting to put together my Novice compulsory and optional skills and parts of routines. Then the next bump in the road occurred! But that story is for another post.

Since my last post in August, 2014 following my training trip to the U.K., a great deal has happened. Now that I have done my first competition in 23 months, it is time to back track a little to fill in what has been happening. After that amazing trip, my motivation was super high, but my right wrist continued to aggravate me. I did all the therapies and exercises recommended by the sports doctors and physio, but still it wasn't right.

In September I went to Dr. Ian Auld, sports doctor, to figure out why now I had less mobility, not just pain. He suggested 2 weeks wearing a splint, then 2 more weeks to see if that would help. It made the pain worse. Then he suggested a referral to a wrist surgeon for observation and an MRI. We decided to get the MRI that week privately, rather than wait 3 or more months for the hospital MRI. Thank goodness we did. 12 hours after the MRI we received a call from Dr. Monument's nurse saying this surgeon wanted to see me in his office the very next morning at 7am.

Dr. Monument was a big strong former hockey player with a great smile. He spent an hour talking with me about my passion, gymnastics, and all the events I love to do, how it makes me feel, what cool things I've done with gymnastics (like train in UK!), and how I want to represent Canada in the future. Then he told me that he is an oncologist and has been studying and doing surgery on bone tumors in the US teaching hospitals for the last 3 years. He saw a large mass in my capitate bone of my right wrist and it could be cancer. Well, that was a surprise. Then he told me he was on my team and this was the plan: surgery with 2 other surgeons as soon as he could coordinate the hand and oncology surgeons at the Alberta Children's Hospital (he wanted the surgery there in case the oncology team was needed, then we would have the children's team, not his adult hospital team). He would biopsy the mass while I was asleep, wait for results, then, remove the mass and taking bone marrow and my stem cells from my hip, make a new capitate bone.  This has not been a successful surgery in the past due to lack of blood supply to the graft, but Dr. Monument and I were sure it would work with a young healthy athlete. We decided at that moment to go with Dr. Monument's plan and have the surgery as soon as possible.

November 19th, 2014, just days after my 13th birthday, I went in for surgery. The day before Kaillie Humphries, a friend of mine who is also an Olympic bobsleigh double gold medalist, took me to Build a Bear to create a friend to bring into surgery with me. That is true friendship.

I was pretty calm going into surgery and knew what to expect. My parents and whole family were happy to hear that the biopsies did not show cancer, just an aggressive mass that eats bone (ugh). Because of that, the surgery went on and Dr. Monument and Dr. Hilderbrand were able to create a new capitate bone, sew me back up, then cast me in a bright blue cast. I took a long time coming out of anaesthesia, but once I figured out how to breathe on my own again, I was able to go to my room with my family. Pretty soon I was feeling good to have visitors. Uschi and her daughter Alex, coaches at the gym, came to visit:

We had a nice talk about the cool science of stem cells as well as Tolkien and The Hobbit. I was pretty groggy.

By the next afternoon I was feeling good and wanted more room to move around in so I was discharged. It was great to get home.

By the second day at home I could have some visitors including my friend Madison Copiak, my coach Mada and head coach Jian.

The fourth day I was allowed to go to the gym for light conditioning - no sweating in case of infection in the wound. Coach Karen welcomed me right away!

The journey had started and I was ready for it!!

UCIC 2016 optional rings Novice Division