On the 11th December 2022 I managed to rupture my ACL… well at least that’s what I thought.
One week into my long awaited ski season I was cruising down a steady blue run feeling pretty confident for someone who has 1 lesson under their belt and what I can only describe as a few hectic plumets down some quite safe green runs.
I was beginning to pick up my turns but what I hadn’t taken into account was that the lack of snowfall and rapidly dropping temperature generates a large amount of Ice.
I had this though.
The most I had braced myself for was a sprained wrist maybe even a few broken bones, but not the ACL. No.
That was a skiers injury. That’s the whole reason I turned to snowboarding in the first place.
The most common question I get asked now is “did you hear a popping sound?”
My answer; “it’s hard to distinguish whether it was the sound of ligaments rupturing or the full weight of my body quite forcefully Impacting on a large block of ice”.
It happened pretty fast. Before I knew it I was snowboard over tit.
I had a sinking feeling in my stomach as I unfastened my bindings, with the blood rushing back to my feet and as determined as ever I stood up.
“fuck!”
Somethings definitely not quite right when we can feel two joints in your knee clunk together and completely give way from beneath you.
A whole load of adrenaline and a rush of panic allowed my to drag myself to the edge of the run (picture John Herbert from Family guy’s dog, Jesse).
It wasn’t the pain or even the idea that I currently only have one functional leg that hit me.
I didn’t want to give this up.
I wasn’t ready to go home.
In my eyes it was the perfect time to go into crisis.
All the worst possibilities rushed through my head. I should probably just lie down and give up here.
But before I do. I’ll call Desiree. Just to fill her in.
My eyes flooded with tears as soon as she picked up.
“I’ve done my knee in”
“I don’t want to go home, please don’t let me go home!”
An honourable mention here to Desiree, who managed to hike her way back up what’s usually only meant to be descended down and approached a shrivelling shambles of what she last saw as a fairly put together version of myself.
Once I had been loaded onto a stretcher and into the back of a blood wagon It was only a short ride over to Avoriaz medical centre, Which I’m sure would have been exciting to anyone that wasn’t three degrees below their usual body temperature.
I was bloody freezing, my sense of humour second to none, and I was now faced with five student doctors, 3 nurses and a doctor who had the emotional capacity compared to that of a solid wooden door.
Not to forget the only piece of clothing sparing my dignity was my underwear.
If you can even call that sparing my dignity.
They pulled, pushed, shoved and shook my knee about, I knew the protocol. This wasn’t my first Rodeo but that didn’t make it any less trying.
Forty minutes in and it was me and doctor number 3 face to face…alone.
Deep breath…
“So your saying, it might possibly, could be but you don’t really know, can’t really give me an answer but is certainly most defiantly something to do with the inside of my knee, maybe the ACL?”
Great.
Let’s skip forward or I can place a brief image of some very uncomfortable floor showers, some inventive ways of getting up the stairs and some overly large and overly strong French drugs.
Now we can skip forward. One car ride on some overly windy roads later and we reach Thonon medical centre or as its more commonly known as Centre Medical du Chablais.
I’m faced with three doors feeling as though I’m partaking in a spin-off of inside no.9 called inside no.4,6 or 8.
Four, I pick four.
I’ve been here before, once again I find my underwear holding the weight of my dignity.
“allonge-toi et reste immobile”.
Do you know what’s difficult?
Staying completely still when it feels as though someone has opened a freezer door at the opposite end of the room and you’re wearing less than what you would on a holiday to Barcelona.
I’d love to say things started to look up from here but that would be a fabrication of the truth.
“So your saying, it might possibly, could be but you don’t really know, can’t really give me an answer but is certainly most defiantly something to do with the inside of my knee, maybe the ACL?”
I guess it’s a glimpse of light in comparison to… well I don’t really know how to finish that sentence.
But a contusion is what they called it, or deep tissue bruising in layman’s terms. I’m not a
medical professional so I don’t know really know what this means.
Luckily I have the help of one of the best physios in the business, if anyone was going to debunk this she was the one.
A couple more tests later…just to be safe…You’re knee really shouldn’t be doing that we both thought looking at my leg which now bent backwards and forwards.
“It’s very rare but sometimes the MRI is not always 100% accurate”.
There it is, that sinking feeling again.
Now four weeks in and I’m standing here on one leg still no closer to a conclusion.
I’m not going to sit here and say it’s been my biggest dream to do a ski season, that would be a lie.
But Whether or not it was a dream of mine in the first place, this isn’t exactly how I imagined spending my ski season.
To flip it upside down.
I’m in the French alps.
There’s snow all around (finally).
There’s lots of new faces and lots of new places and I now have the chance to put my energy into something new.
It’s not always easy to look at the positive side and I’m very lucky in general to be in the situation I am in and nothing worse. But even the smallest issues in someone’s life can feel like the worlds out to get you in at that moment.
Hannah x