Independent Lens

Man

So, your diagnosis is a mid-tibia stress fracture, which occurs very commonly in jumping athletes. So, the tibia bone, which is, on her, the midshaft leg bone, it takes all the stress. Instead of breaking in half, it gets a tiny little break in the cortex surface, or the outer surface, of the bone. They're very slow healing, so she spent months trying to get this to heal beforehand, and then we mad a decision about how to treat it.

Our one decision was to put a rod. One option was to go near her knee and put a rod from here all the way down the bone into her leg inside the bone. The nice thing about that is that it takes care of the whole thing. The disadvantage is that about 20% of people have some knee pain, and she's a jumper, so you're trying not to mess with her knee at all.

We made an incision right here on the front, and in that incision, we found the little stress fractures. We drilled across them with a needle to stimulate some bleeding, we packed the bone marrow cells in there, and then we put the plate, I'm still not doing grand allegros, the big jumps.

Doctor

Right. And my first show is in about two weeks. Misty,

voiceover

When I heard the words "black dreaded line fracture," it sounds like death to me. It was scary, and then finding out that it meant almost a complete break through my bone, it's hard to fathom that that can happen from dancing, but it was just impact over and over and over again, probably, through the course of the year that caused it. Six screws, and this one on the bottom is the one that's giving me all the irritation. Misty, Had I continued to dance for who knows how much longer, my bone could have completely snapped in half.

Gilda

The rest of the ballet world, including, I think, her company, once they realized, you know, the extent of her injuries, I don't think anyone truly expected her to be able to come back from that. You know, you combine the extent of the injury with her age, the amount of wear and tear on the body, I think that they just sort of said, "One plus one plus one equals three, "and you're not coming back, and if you do come back, "you won't be able to come back and be-- you won't be able to pick up where you left off."