#I told a clinician who was looking at my knee the other month that I was trans (cause they always ask abt all meds n diagnoses)

[dkettchen]

[mrlongkgraves]

A gymnast gets her spring back

Mikayla on the uneven bars at age 11, two years before she mastered the pirouette [PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE COMEIRO FAMILY]

In order to master the pirouette, Mikayla Comeiro drew on many of the strengths she’d developed as a competitive gymnast: hours of practice, determination and physical stamina. To perform a pirouette, the gymnast swings herself into a handstand on the uneven bars and walks her hands around in a circle, rotating her entire body while remaining upside down.

Mikayla worked on the skill last summer and executed the move at a competition in Virginia this past winter. “I love the feeling of success when you work really hard and do well at a competition,” she says. It was a satisfying comeback from the hip injury that forced Mikayla to take six months off from any sort of practice or competition last year.

Mikayla competing at age 9

Mikayla, who is now 13, first got involved in gymnastics at the age of 2, when she and her father attended parent-child classes together. “I just kept doing it and got really into it,” she explains. As Mikayla excelled, the sport became more demanding. During any given week, she and her teammates practice five days a week, for a total of 19 hours.

Ignoring her injury

When she first felt pain in her left hip, Mikayla waited it for it to go away. Instead of getting better, however, the pain got worse. Eventually the pain grew so bad, she could barely walk. “It was hard to say something to my parents,” says Mikayla. “The pain had been going on for so long, I knew it was going to be something bad.” When she finally spoke up, her mother, Kim, brought her to see Dr. Lyle Micheli.

The Comeiro family knew Dr. Micheli well by then. Mikayla had been his patient in the Performing Artists Athlete Program for injuries to her foot, ankle, knee and back. “Gymnastics puts a lot of stress on the body,” says Kim, who knows from experience that injuries are a fact of life for competitive gymnasts. When neither physical therapy nor crutches relieved Mikayla’s hip pain, Dr. Micheli referred her to Dr. Sarah Jackson in the Sports Ultrasound Clinic.

Mikayla defies gravity at age 11

A look inside the joint in motion

Sports ultrasound uses sound waves to create images of muscles, ligaments and joints as patients move them. This dynamic view enables clinicians to diagnose injuries with greater accuracy and begin appropriate treatment sooner.

In Mikayla’s case, the ultrasound revealed she had an avulsion fracture in her left hip. Avulsion fractures are particularly common in young athletes, who are prone to overuse injuries. Over time, rigorous training can cause a separation at the growth plate that lies between a large bone, such as the hip bone, and a small chunk of bone. Typically, the small chunk of bone grows into the larger bone as the child grows. But when an athlete puts continued stress on the area, the tendon pulls the growth plate and the small chunk of bone away from the larger bone.

Non-surgical hip repair

Dr. Jackson and her colleague Pierre d’Hemecourt determined that a platelet rich plasma (PRP) injection had a reasonable chance of healing Mikayla’s hip. PRP is a type of regenerative medicine, which repairs damaged tissues by triggering the body’s natural growth factors to help repair the damaged tissue. “She called us on a Sunday to give us their opinion,” says Kim. “That gave me a lot of confidence in her commitment.”

One problem remained, however. Despite an unusually high pain threshold, Mikayla does not like needles. “I was very nervous,” she admits. By then, however, she had been in pain and unable to practice for three months. Her teammates were learning new skills while she fell further and further behind. Her other treatment option would have been surgery, possibly with the use of screws, to repair her hip. She and her parents decided to give PRP injection a try.

Mikayla chats with her coach at age 13

On the day of the procedure, Dr. Jackson drew blood from Mikayla’s arm. Then, using a centrifuge, clinicians separated out the platelets so they could be injected into Mikayla’s injured hip. Using ultrasound technology, Dr. Jackson guided the needle directly into the damaged area. “She had to get the needle between two bones in an area that was very inflamed,” says Kim, who alternated between watching the screen and watching her daughter’s face. “It was clear Mikayla was uncomfortable.”

A long weekend

The whole family held its breath that weekend, waiting to see if Mikayla’s pain would go away. “The treatment was on Friday,” remembers Kim. “Saturday and Sunday were miserable.” Then, on Tuesday morning, something remarkable happened. “I asked Mikayla the same question I’d been asking her for several months, how’s your hip? For the first time, she told me she was not in pain.”

Recovering smarter, not harder

True to form, Mikayla wanted to return to the gym right away. Instead, she heeded Dr. Jackson’s advice and gave her hip time to heal. Six weeks later, in late July, she finally returned to practice. Even then, she had to avoid all jumping and other high-impact exercises for another month.

Mikayla returned to her sport, and victory, after recovering from a hip avulsion fracture

Looking back, Mikayla says she would go through the procedure again, even though she’s still no fan of needles. “My hip was in pain for 12 weeks and nothing else was working,” she says, adding, “The entire time, I was not able to do gymnastics.”

New skills, on and off the mat

Since her recovery, in addition to the pirouette, Mikayla has mastered the 1.5 punch. The move involves a round off, a jump, a front tuck and a one-and-a-half twist in midair. Then, the instant her feet touch the mat, she launches into another jump, flips and sticks her landing. “Adding the second jump wasn’t hard but it took me three months to learn the twist,” she says.

  ​

Kim is proud, relieved and interested in teaching her daughter the skill of self-knowledge. “Mikayla’s learning to listen to her body,” she says. “She knows, if there’s a problem, she needs to say something before it becomes severe.” She pauses, then adds, “It’s a work in progress.”

Learn more about the Performing Artist Athletes Program and the Sports Ultrasound Clinic.

The post A gymnast gets her spring back appeared first on Thriving Blog.

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[claireverbeck]

How I Learned to Love My Body Hair

I'm a hairy person. I don't really remember a time when I wasn't. By nine or ten years old, my legs were vertical forests. I wore shorts to school every chance I got. Other kids were mystified by my premature leg hair: did I shampoo it? Did it ever tangle? What did the breeze feel like on my legs?

I was proud.

That changed somewhere around age thirteen, when my pubescent insecurities were especially swollen and tender. A well-meaning loved one, who happened to be a bit further along the stream of adolescence, told me that body hair was a source of shame. The only people who had hairy legs were men, and I wasn't one of those. In order to fit in and be a "normal" girl as I transferred to a new middle school, I had to shave.

So I did. After an hour and two single-blade Bic razors, my legs were smooth (if a little bloody). I proudly felt like I was growing up, though I also felt a heavy sense of loss. Without my hair, I was paradoxically more a "woman" and less a "child."

I continued shaving for years. I would spend an hour in the shower every weekend, trying my hardest to obtain the satiny smooth legs all my female classmates had. At several points, I even used Nair on my arms (my arms!). I had become increasingly ashamed of my own body.

During a routine sports physical toward the end of high school, a clinician noticed my hair. She quickly recommended that I be tested for PCOS, or poly-cystic ovarian syndrome. After the tests came back negative, I instead received an official diagnosis of hirsutism. This was an enormous blow to my teenaged ego: how was I supposed to be a real and beautiful woman if I looked like a werewolf?

Somewhere along the way, though, I realized that beauty, femininity, and body hair were not mutually exclusive. I wish I could point to a singular epiphany, but in reality, I think I just got tired of shaving my legs. I stopped about a year ago, at first as a sort of "screw you" to the patriarchal world outside Wellesley. I wanted to spend my time writing, or playing the guitar, or reading. I didn't want to be forced into diverting my precious attention to my appearance. Plus, it was wintertime so my legs would be mostly, safely hidden. Before long, though, spring reared its colorful head, daring me to maintain the hair that had populated my legs. I could only wear pants for so long.

I stubbornly decided to try not giving a fuck.

The first day I wore a knee-length dress to work, I was beyond uncomfortable. Everyone in my male-dominated workplace could see my hair, exposed and vulnerable. But I stuck it out. Shaving was no longer worthwhile. I hated feeling obligated to use my time in pursuit of an arbitrary beauty standard, one which I hadn't chosen for myself. I hated spending money on razors. I hated being itchy. And I was beginning to enjoy the defiant feeling that grew along with my body hair. I found amusement in each stolen glance at my legs. I could tell that, for a lot of eyes, my swishy dresses and body hair didn't fit into the visual prototype of "feminine."

I loved that.

Months later, my leg hair is still dense. I recently epilated my armpits, an extraordinarily painful and familiar process. I don't regret either decision. As I grow outside the Wellesley bubble, I feel increasingly empowered to make deliberate choices about my appearance. I seldom wear makeup, but when I do, it's because I want to. Following that same logic, I'm confident that if I shave again, I'll do so for my own motivations, and not for anyone else.

There are still plenty of days when I wonder how it would feel to have barren legs, but I've reached a point where my time and money seem too valuable to waste on shaving. My leg hair has become a symbol of my strength, my confidence, and my womanhood. I've reclaimed that loss for my insecure thirteen-year-old self. For the first time in my life, I can say that I'm genuinely unapologetic for my human body and all its hairy splendor.

As I wrap this up, I'm curious to hear other perspectives on grooming, especially as it pertains to gender. Do you shave/wax/epilate/etc.? What are your motivations for/against doing so? Have these changed over time?

Leave a comment and we'll have a conversation.

As always, thank you for reading.

[itsyueko]

7.31.17 \\ 21:49 Northwestern Medicine Patient Care Planning #EarlyMobilityProgramProject #NorthwesternLakeForestHospitalProfessionalPracticeModel 

Ever since I woke up from my nap, I went over my manager’s annual eval. comments from when we had gone over it in her office earlier today. I was deeply considering participation in any projects as a pre-nursing student since I’m internal and have access to these resources (I thought of doing this when they had gone over it during orientation training). One of my patients was a charge nurse here in acute care and told me how she started at lake forest and went to school at clc too and told me about their reimbursement program. I have this 20 page something copy of the reimbursement guide and am considering this since it’s available to us within three months of hire (i think... i’ll have to look into it to see).

Basically, I’m interested in the early mobility program right now as well as Huddle and bedside shift reports. And other engagement type projects. I’ve been commended for getting patients up in the chair in the morning (Usually 4 hours after surgery PT/OT comes to visit the patient and have them do some certain activity level while the patient is still under stronger meds and anesthesia ). I’ve noticed that people who have trained me on nights just clean and do chores or the other q4 vitals throughout the shift. And I’ve noticed oncoming shift asks their patients if they want to get up in the chair as we do bedside shift report. SO having learned on time management, and the struggles of teamwork interaction lol with morning shift, I like getting my patients out of bed and having already prepared fresh linen for their chairs. I always receive positive comments for doing this and not just from staff but from the patients themselves. Especially when it means knowing they’re one step closer to going home and going back into their daily routines.

And over the course of 3 days (some of our ortho patients are known to have stayed on our unit for 3 days before getting the OK from the doctor to go home) they adapt and adjust to ways of maneuvering in and out of their rooms. Recently, I’ve learned to ask about the types of dressing they’re wearing and on what location. And if they have a vascutherm set up in their room (one of the renowned doctors on the unit already has a vascutherm sent to the rooms for knee patients for example). 

I’m excited and I’ve been told I should do some journaling about work (from Beth lol after our meeting) and my growth and positive feedbacks (including criticisms and guidance). So here’s an example and some notes I started jotting for ideas or for whatever questions I had to ask one of the nurse clinicians when I come back to work; just to ask about these projects even more and how to get started.