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!!