The show casualty

Well it's pretty obvious what's happened here!

The shows were excellent and the feedback was overwhelming. I loved performing in the Entertainment Centre, it was such a great experience to do things professionally. The three shows happened pretty much flawlessly (I'll get to my injury) and everyone finished feeling like all the hard work paid off - plus some! We had one night of rehearsal in the venue and I had my acts plus supervision of the trapeze girls to worry about.

On rehearsal night the aerial acts were left out as we ran out of time. I was pretty peeved and so were the trapeze girls - seven hours of waiting around for nothing! So on opening night we had an opportunity for a run through of our act - it had to be run through regardless as the technical side of the act (stage light & sound) had to be organised. It happened about an hour before the first show went on and we were super rushed through. So much so that the ground mats for a tumbling act was not set up correctly - during the show I have a moment when I have to run across them. But my foot slipped through either a crack or just off a double stacked mat (I can't remember exactly) and it twisted and I got up on it. I keeled over in pain but stood up to try to finish the act - no good, something wasn't right! My foot blew up immediately, we strapped and iced it straight away as I thought it was a blown tendon. I couldn't believe my bad luck as I only had an hour to deal with it before the shows started!

But I did all the shows, limping backstage and full weight bearing during my acts as I didn't want the audience to see I was injured. People who noticed the strapping thought I had it on there for support. After the two days of shows I presented to the hospital, was xrayed and told it was a fractured base of 5th metatarsal (long bone of the foot near the ankle). Everyone was surprised I had performed on it - so was I, it never even occured to me that it could be broken! Thankfully it was a nice clean break and hadn't displaced.

Treatment is a cast on for 6 weeks, non-weight bearing and elevated as much as possible. I'm halfway through, 3 weeks and one day to go! The hardest things for me is not being able to train and relying on everyone to give me a lift to get around. I'm getting the hang of these crutches and have been able to cut my showering/dressing time from 60 minutes to half and hour. I desperately wanted it off within a day of having it on but after 3 weeks I've been talked into realising it's best I keep it on!