When I signed my National Letter of Intent to play softball at Nicholls State University in the fall of my senior year of high school, I envisioned my career playing out in numerous ways. I envisioned walk-offs and rings and teammates that would continue to be my sisters long after my softball days were done. But I never not even once envisioned injuries and especially not surgeries.
About a year after signing to play at Nicholls, I found myself alone in a gown at the hospital awaiting to hear news that I both desperately wanted to know and also nothing to do with. It’s a strange feeling being both so eager and so resentful for a piece of information you're about to receive from a man in a white coat who went to school for years to be able to diagnose and fix the problem on the x-ray. But I’m curious as to whether they make orthopedic surgeons take a course on how to tell an athlete their beloved career that has yet to even start, will need to take a detour. I was able to finish my freshman year with at least the ability to be a designated hitter and help my team that way.
That summer, I had surgery on my rotator cuff. “It’s a 9-12 month recovery process, this time next year you’ll be as good as new. Probably even better,” said my doctor. I had no choice but to trust him. He warned me of the the extreme physical pain I would be in shortly after the surgery, gave my a prescription for hydrocodone, patted my good shoulder and showed me the way to the door. It was that easy. I stand here, or sit I suppose, on July 28, 2016, 365 days post operation, without the ability to throw normally or fix my hair without contorting my back at angles I'm sure aren’t healthy. One whole year filled with tears, frustration and anger later, I still don’t have full range of motion.
It’s so easy to say well she just didn’t go to therapy or try hard enough. Well, I can string apart that accusation real fast. I spent so much time in the training room at school that I had almost every athlete’s injury and therapy protocol memorized by heart. I can do some things that one of my roommate’s who’s major is athletic training is learning about, simply because I was there every day. I also went therapy two to three times a week at the hospital next door. My bands and my Jas Splint (a Jas Splint is a contraption that you strap on and crank until your arm is at the angle that you can’t do on your own.) came with me on almost every softball trip we had that season. I shouldn’t have to say the following but I will anyway. I gave physical therapy my absolute all. I worked harder in that training room than in any other weight room or softball field combined because I knew that was the only way to get back on the field. So how do I still not have full range of motion? Turns out, playing musical chairs with therapists, getting in a car accident and developing frozen shoulder is a good way to stall progress.
So what do you do when every day you wake up, go to therapy and work your butt off and it’s still not enough? What do you do when they told you you’d be 100 percent by this time but you're still not even close? What do you do when you know you have to walk on campus in a couple of weeks and still technically have to be on the injured reserved list? You just keep going. Or like my good friend Joe Dirt once said, “you gotta keep on keepin' on.” No where in your therapy protocol does it say feel sorry for yourself. Be grateful for all the progress you’ve made so far. Don’t give up. And most importantly, don’t lose faith. You can do it. Just keep on keepin’ on.
