TITANIUM PLATE… IN MY ARM!
April 18, 2008 | 1 Comment
K, so I’m an instructor at Timberline (T-line, represent), and at the beginning of this season, i was asked to help train some of the new instructors. Sweet right? A girl rider training the boys.. word. Well Oct. 27th, pre-season conditions existed and it was my first day back. REMEMBER THAT: First day back. And I was all geared up and ready to go. We all strap in, and tell the newb’s to follow us. Not even two minutes into the run, im riding under molly’s, trying to avoid haggard patches of dirt, trying to ride to the lower lifts. (Bad, Bad idea) Why was that a bad idea? I’ll tell you– Riding on dirt=pain. Going heelside down the face of the mountain, i was already off balance somewhat, and then riding on to a patch of dirt stops my board yet i keep going. And no i didn’t see the patch of dirt, or hell, or whatever. But the whole point is that I didn’t go down in a blaze of glory like riding a rail or roller, but because i didn’t see some dirt. I ended up shattering the radius in my left arm, by the wrist. I mean shattered when i say it. It broke in half, with the upper half breaking into four pieces, plus some that the doc. ended up pulling out. AND!!! on top of that the other half shifted underneath the shattered pieces. Tried to set it twice, and that didn’t work. Whatev. At this point my arm looks like a piece of play dough. I thought i had sprang it at first but then got pissed off when i was trying to tell one of the guys i was riding with i was ok, and he kept saying WHAT?! I CANT HEAR YOU! so pissed. so pissed. Its so annoying to have to repeat yourself especially when you just hit it hard. So I get back up to ski patrol after this happens and my boss and her boss are up there. I’m so pissed. I know im not going to ride for at least two months. (which ended up being a few weeks. fyi, don’t ride with a cast, they smell haggard.) The surgery went well…. I suppose. I was too high to remember even getting home. I was knocked out hard. I saw the xrays a day later and theres a friggin metal plate in my arm. Titanium to be exact, and seven pins. Apparently it was so bad he had to pull shtuff together so my arm wouldn’t look like a limp noodle. All in all I haven’t been able to work for at least four months and i might get released from my doc. soon to work. I’ve been riding.. i mean i have a cast on, what could happen? Tee-hee.
Torn ACL
April 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Started 2008 off with a season ender. Tore my acl on January 3. Got surgery on it January 11. I was really depressed about it at first, but I’ve been doin well in physical therapy and turned my focus to the long term instead of short term. Doctors said around six months to a year until im able to snowboard again. Just gonna rehab the hell outta this knee and get it ready for next season or possibly an August trip to NZ.
WOW, this is my kinda website…Sport Physio with a focus on board sports
April 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Hey All,
Stumbled across this site while I was looking for the soundtrack list for the Foursquare (North, South, East, West) DVD.
This site is either a blessing to me in disguise, or a pandoras box, that Im sure will open.
My job is a sports physio- I work with athletes of all types, but my passion is board sports. I have worked at all levels of abilities-pro, national teams, provincial teams, and everyday joe blows. The one thing that they all have in common is that they get hurt at some point or another. For some its a potential career ending knee injury (often in a place with substandard medical care), and for others its a nuisance that has taken them out for the one week where the skies decided to puke snow while they sit home bound with nothing more to show for than a stink face.
Its quite funny, when I started working in my field, I was hesitant to bring up the fact that i wanted to focus on a “non-sport” sport, for fear of being cast out in the medical community, much like many riders have felt cast out when they just didnt fit into the carbon copy mould required in many team sport communities. Then I thought to my self- screw that. Not only do I love the sport, it kills me to see a fellow rider in the dumps because they have been sidelined due to an injury. The worse part is I have seen to many riders with what I can the “skater mentality” (avoid the medical comminuty because they fear the doc will make them stop) and end up making matters worse. I tend to approach things from a damage control point of view. If its not a serious injury that warrants the riders to not ride, knowing the rider will continue regardless of what the docs say, I try to grab the injury by the horns and minimize its effect on the riders performance.
I have to say that I love that the rider community (at all levels) have been VERY appreciative of my involvement with them, which when the wallet seems tight, at least reminds me that I am helping some awesome folks, who would have possibly been overlooked as man of the medical community migrate towards helping the much more pervasive sports (ie hockey).
In any case, I will likely be posting here once in a while, perhaps with some case studies so some of you out there perhaps may learn a thing or two towards expediting your own injury recovery.
I more than welcome questions about your predicament, KEEPING IN MIND that legally speaking, I cannot treat you online, but I can tell you what things you should look out for and perhaps a dialog between us may lead us to a way to help treat your injury (or at least what direction to go–> xray, MRI, see your doc, etc…)
Thanks again for taking the time to read up
Joel Kryczka
Joel Kryczka, Sports Physiotherapist
BSc.P.T., Diploma Sports PT, BHKin(ExSc), M.C.P.A.
Pinnacle Sports Physiotherapy kelowna (BC, Canada)
(250)-764-7505
www.pinnaclesportsphysio.com
who needs spines anyways?
April 18, 2008 | 1 Comment
Alright so I went big last year [compared to the past, considering it was my first year riding] I started to do my ollies and 180’s. I also took up skateboarding as my summer fix. I trusted the concrete more than i should have. I landed on my back a few times This summer I started having back pain. I went to the doctor, they sent me to x rays and they came back clean. Figuring it was muscular they sent me to physical therapy things only seemed to get worse. I spent $100 on something that didn’t work. they then sent me to get a bone scan, it came back positive for a spinal fracture. I have now been in a back brace for 3 months and have another month to go yet. Is there a way to make the healing process to go faster? especially with the winter hitting hard now. I really need to get back out onto the mountain. Any advice would be greatly aprreciated
Left Knee ACL still torn from 1/7/07 need help with surgery
April 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Hello my name is Justin. I currently live in Three Rivers, CA.
On 1/7/07 I was living and working at Mammoth Mountain Ski Resort. I had a friend from out of town meet up with me to hit the park. I was riding Main Park all day when i met up with my buddy. He wasn’t warmed up like me so he wanted to go to Forest Trail which is right next to the Main Park. I put my headphones on and got completley side tracked on where I was thinking I was in the Main Park I dropped in the first jump and over shot by 20 feet landed in the flats and torn my ACL and MCL in my left knee. That was over a year ago and I still have not been able to get my surgery I need for my knee…I need help. I can’t ride, run, jump, or surf like i need!
Down time in Chile
August 23, 2007 | Leave a Comment
The summer of 07 I was invited to go on a trip to South America with a couple friends of mine, we planned to be in Chile for 2 weeks and Argentina for one. The first week went really well, we had 4 pow days and the stoke factor was super high. We heard there was a contest the next Saturday so I thought it would be fun to go in and maybe win some quick skrillas to help pay for the trip. The contest ran from afternoon till evening so the temperature of the air and snow would change drastically. The qualifiers went well and the pre-final went smooth also until the sun dropped behind the mountains, making the snow quite a bit faster. I had already landed a solid run which left me confident about the finals so I was just going to play it safe and do something stock. I didn’t really account for the change of speed that would occur and came into the jump at the same pace as before. I knew as soon as I was leaving the lip of the jump I miscalculated!! Spinning out of control all I could think of was trying to spot my landing and protect my head. When I hit the ground and bounced and slid to the bottom and thought to myself “that wasn’t that bad” so I unstrapped and when I tried to get up and walkway from the landing I felt sharp piercing pains shooting through my foot, and had to get a hand walking to the lodge to assess the damage. after 20 minutes of have a new heartbeat in my lower left leg I decide I couldn’t finish the finals because the pain was just too much. Now back in the hotel for the last 4 days with assorted pain killers and ice packs I wait it out to see if I should go for an x-ray. where were staying is about 1 hour from the hospital down the sketchiest narrowest road you’ll ever see in your life and I cost’s about $150 to get a ride there, Oh and did I mention you have to book your ride at least a day in advance…. so while everyone is out slashing it up having fun in the sun, I just wait in the hotel till we leave and then get some x-rays to see what’s wrong.. The only thing I can do right now is stay positive and just be happy that it wasn’t my knee and thank my angel’s for watching out for me!
Dream Maker at Bear Mt. was nightmare
August 2, 2007 | Leave a Comment
On April 13th of this year I was making runs through the park at Bear Mt. , Killington , VT. All was well and I was stomping some big jumps when things went for the worse. It was windy and the jumps were baked out and not maintained. The park had been closed for the week and we were the first group of riders to use it since it had been closed. So as you can tell conditions werent ideal. I made my way through and then started down the runway for the last big kicker , started my rotation for a 180 but then for some reason , I bailed out. I stopped in mid air and basically dropped straight to the knuckle. My left leg was first impact and immediately snapped my Tib and Fib in the lower part of my leg. Then to brace myself , I stupidly put my arm out and due to high velocity impact , it hyper extended , dislocated and fractured my elbow. So there I was on the transition in extreme pain , nobody around and my season was over. Talk about being bummed. The pain in my arm was the main problem. I even unstrapped my board myself and was able to sit up while waiting for Ski Patrol. All the riders blocked the jump like a small army and that was inspirational. I had to have emergency surgery on both my leg and elbow and had to spend 2 nights in Rutland Regional [thanks guys]. Fast forward nearly 3 months and here I am trying to figure out the IRF. I have 22k in bills , no insurance and NEED HELP. tlaravie7@hotmail.com
Ruined left shoulder
May 23, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Mammoth 2005- Day after thanks giving- I find myself laying on the floor next to a downhill box. what happened? it all happened so fast. All I knew was one minute I was at the lip and now I find myself lying on the floor. I try to get up, but wait. I can’t move my arm. this is entirely new. A pain that I have never experienced before. It was kind of interesting, it hurt yeah, but it wasn’t the kind of pain I thought a break would be. Maybe it was the adrenaline rush or maybe I was just trying to ignore it, but I always imagined a break would hurt so much more. So here’s the lowdown on what happened. I was hauling toward this lip, don’t know why but I was. I decided to bail out at the last minute and forget the box, after all it will be there next run. But no, I decide on another last minute decision to go for it. Whats the worst that can happen right? So as I’m hauling up to this lip at a perpendicular angle, I feel that something is wrong…very wrong. I pop and begin the 270 rotation and I guess I catch my nose on the box or there was something sharp sticking out, either way something caught and ruined the rotation throwing me off balance, atleast this is what I’m told. I do remember the next part though, I saw it from a third person perspective. Kind of scary when I think about how close to getting really hurt I was. I fall forward with all of my bodyweight centered on my left side, my shoulder is aimed at the box. This is going to hurt. I fall and keep falling, everything going in slow motion of course and hear it. The loudest crack I have ever heard. I get up slowly and painfully and time instantly speeds up. The pain hit so fast and so hard I didn’t believe it was real. My friends offered to get ski patrole but I refuse, after all. What kind of snowboarder am I if I can’t get up and get down a hill. For those of you that have been to Mammoth, I was at McCoy lodge (A.K.A. mid chalet) and had to snowboard to the bottom of Main lodge. Since this was the begining of the season there were only a few select runs open and I chose to ride down the one with the most moguls and the most people. Anyways thats boring, so I finally make it to Main lodge and refuse first aid, I thought it was going to cost me money and I had no money on me. I run to the bathroom, tear off my jacket and look. I see a huge lump on my left shoulder, incredibly painful to touch and immobile. awesome. My friends decided to get ski patrole for me and in hind sight I appreciate it, but at the time I wasn’t very happy with that. Mostly because I didn’t want to be a b****. Lovely. Anyways they talk me into going into the patrole and tell me it’s free. Now I’m sold. So they bandage me up, and sling me and say “we can’t tell you what it is for sure, go to Mammoth hospital.” Ok. I go and I sit there for about 3 minutes and they try and cut my shirts off. Now I happen to actually like these shirts so I refuse and we struggle to get a broken shoulder out of 2 layers of shirts. Woo Hoo it was like a party in my arm and every nerve was invited. Shirt comes off, and I am marched into the X-ray room where the technitian cracks a joke that isn’t funny, something about how he’s seen alot of me and blah blah blah. They come back to me and tell me my clavicle is broken in half and sort of splintered but nothing crazy, sling it up, bag it, ice it and it will be good as new in as little as 6 weeks. Okay… So I stay up in Mammoth with my friends to let them have a good time. I return to LA to go to a doctor, This is december 1. I think. Anyways I go and he tells me I have a mal form and the bones wont join back together. awesome. December 5th at 7:30am is my surgery date. Once again. Awesome. So I wake up and man I feel rough, I must have asked the lady the time atleast 12 times and my favorite line of the day I guess “MORE MORPHINE THIS HURTS LIKE F***!” So heres what I won in the surgery: A brand new titanium plate, five or six screws and a scar that is atleast seven inches long and a constant dullness in my shoulder. Lesson learned right? No.
Fast forward to February 17, 2007. I am once again in Mammoth, once again hauling down unbound. And I see my favorite kink rail. Nice lip, poppy with about a 2 foot gap and a 1 or so foot gap up. My favorite is to gap the flat and land on the downhill. Anyways, hauling down and gap. Land way too fast and too hard and my board slips from under my feet. Another loud POP and shooting pain. I immedietly yell and scream, get up and run to the lift line after unstrapping. I’m thinking “god damn I broke my shoulder again.” same pain sort of. Anyways I go to the ski patrole and they say go to the hospital. I go and they say it looks like a seperation and minor clavicle fractures. Awesome. So I go back to LA to a real doctor and he says its a seperation and that I can’t ride for 3 months. Anyways now I owe like $1,100.00 and need major help! I just turned 18 and the parents aren’t helping.
A True story by Gabe Taylor
May 6, 2007 | Leave a Comment
A True story by Gabe Taylor
This story is not embellished. This is how it happened. If you feel weird after a crash, go get checked out. If you hit your head, go get checked out. Shit happens.
It wasn’t that bad of a crash. I did have a bad premonition about it, and I didn’t like the jump much at all. But it was one of those, worst case scenarios. I was in Big Bear for the TWS team challenge and filming with Torey Piro for the upcoming movie Voice. I was doing a front cork or something and it went wrong, I re-corked onto the landing and my arm jammed all up into my mid-section. The wind was knocked from me but I thought that was it. After hitting the jump again and then talking with some friends I decided to bounce back to Mammoth. On my way down the hill I stopped at the Ski Patrol hut and was complaining about my shoulder hurting and feeling a little off. I didn’t hit my shoulder during the crash and I tried explaining this to the patrolman but he said I was fine. (Note for file, when your shoulder hurts and you have had trauma to your mid-section, it is a sign of internal bleeding, either to your spleen or liver.) This would have been nice to have known earlier, but as it was, I got in my car and was on my way down the back of Big Bear headed to Mammoth.
After about an hour of winding down the hill I started to feel weird. Real weird. Light headed, spacey, dizzy and an all-together feeling of serious wrongness. I pulled over and got out of my car. This is when things start getting a little hazy. I remember my eyes started to flick into the back of my head and I thought I was going to pass out. My arm was wrapped around my side view mirror keeping me from falling on the ground. The furious attempts being made to flag someone down and get some help were proving futile. The lack of cell phone coverage didn’t help either. I’m not quite sure how long I was on the side of the road, dangling from my Montero. I do remember concentrating on the clouds so I wouldn’t pass out. Not passing out seemed really important to me. I also remember looking into the eyes of an older woman as she drove by with a look of disgust. I was screaming, “Help Me! Help Me!” and she just kept on driving, but I’ll never forget those eyes. Maybe she thought I was overdosing or something. The Apple Valley on the backside of Big Bear is known as one of the biggest Meth producing spots in California, so I can’t totally blame all those people who drove right on past me.
I decided to get my shit together and try to leave that place. Back behind the wheel I continued down the hill and into Apple Valley. I started feeling a bit better and thought maybe I should just head up to Mammoth. “What is the worst that could be wrong with me?” I was thinking. Without knowing I had taken a few wrong turns and was headed North instead of the Westerly direction I was supposed to be traveling. Everyone has things happen to them for a reason, those times in a life where a decision can drastically change the outcome of the rest of that life. As I sat at a red light, with no traffic anywhere, without knowing, I was smack dab in the middle of one of these life-altering moments. After what felt like five minutes but was probably one, I was about to gas it and burn the light when a red cross caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. A Hospital. I bounced back and forth but decided on getting a quick check up before getting back on the road. I parked in front of the hospital and after getting out of my car new immediately I had made the right decision. My footsteps were erratic at best and walking the 100 ft. to the entrance was proving extremely difficult.
I burst into the front entrance yelling, “I’m fucked up, I’m fucked up! I don’t know what’s wrong but I’m so FUCKED UP!” Probably not the best way to enter a hospital, especially considering the amount of Meth overdoses that place sees, but what was I going to do? The nurse looked at me with little compassion and asked what I had taken. “C’mon son, what are you on?”
I didn’t know what she was talking about and after she realized this got me into a room where my shirt was removed only to reveal a stomach resembling that of a woman with child. My whole abdomen was huge and after a quick x-ray my doctor had a choice for me.
“So, Gabriel, I have two choices for you. I can remove your severely ruptured spleen right now, or not, and you’ll probably die within the hour.”
I shit you not this is what the guy said to me! It was so fucked up. He didn’t even flinch. I told him to do what he had to do and he then started explaining how difficult the surgery was going to be.
“This is a very serious operation and it doesn’t have a 100% success rate. Blah, Blah, Blah.”
I was fairly terrified, and after signing my life away, literally, I was prepped and ready for surgery. People have asked me what I was thinking about as I laid on that stretcher, waiting for the drugs to knock me out, and I can’t really explain. In hind site I was super calm, I didn’t think I was going to die but in actuality it was a possibility.
It felt like someone had ripped my stomach in half, which they had. Awakening to the most intense pain I have ever experienced was a rude awakening at it’s absolute worst. Once the morphine touched my veins I regained my breath and made friends with the itchy calmness that the drug provided in this time of utter discomfort. Two weeks were spent in that hospital and I was a mess. My stomach had 20 staples that resembled a zipper stitched up the middle. The hose extending out the end of my dick was how I would be peeing for my stay and it was very uncomfortable when the nurses would walk by and bump it. In fact, there were tubes all over the place and when I’d go for a walk around the hospital wing, I had to have two people to carry all my shit.
I was back snowboarding in two months and the whole experience really made me re-evaluate what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to snowboard. I had always liked snowboarding, but that experience made me realize how much I loved it. I was not giving snowboarding what it deserved and since then I have progressed more and loved every minute I’ve spent strapped in.
My mom got all the paperwork from the hospital to review and read. Through all the scientific operation talk the doctor wrote that the “Patient should have expired on the way to the hospital.” Reading that was insane, it put a lot of things in perspective. We all here how short life is but fuck, it really is. In the weeks after my injury two people in mammoth died from a ruptured spleen and the blood loss that is associated with it. They didn’t know what was wrong and went to sleep only to never wake up.
3 months for a broken ankle!?!?!
April 14, 2007 | Leave a Comment
So here it is…
I under rotated a 3 on a table at my home hill and over shot by quite a ways thus landing backwards ficing straight up the hill. My knees compressed and over flexed super hard as did my ankles. It felt like my ankle kinda exploded in my boot but I rode down and tried to convince myslef that it wasn’t as bad as it felt. I was told at the hospital that I had a minor sprain and the doctor made fun of me when I told him I couldn’t walk very well and wouldn’t mind a krutch. So I sucked it up and drove home. Two weeks later I went to the clinic because there should have been more progress and the second doctor I saw told me there might be some minor ligament damage so he sent me off to Physio where the therapist massaged my “damaged ligaments”. Three and a half weeks later I went back to the clinic and doctor number three told me he thinks i might have broken something….. So I go for an x-ray and it turns up negative. The doctor tries to send me back to physio for my “sprain”. This is at 5 1/2 weeks! I finally insist that the doctor sends me for a CAT scat. The results come back a few days later and I’m fitted for an air cast cause I’ve got 2 broken bones in my ankle……… Sweet… starting the 6 week healing process after 6 weeks of doctors guessing and telling me to just keep working on my feet 8 hours a day. Thats 3 months. So lame. anyways I guess the lesson is: Don’t be afraid to ask the doctor to send you for some conclusive tests. Waiting and guessing sucks hard. Ask questions and do what it takes to figure it out so it heals properly and quickly. Oh and drink your milk like your mom’s say ya little grommets.
Word up, stay healthy and shred for fun
Ryan (aka ellington)
