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My name is Melanie Niblick and I went to Dr. Brady at TOC for interment shoulder pain.
I actually had an injury back in February and I realized there was a little more to
it then just the regular wear and tear of being a dancer.
We did an MRI in March and he actually, Dr. Brady had actually kinda called it before
we had the MRI. He said, "Oh, I think you have a SLAP tear." And I did, along with a
few other things we found along the process. I probably would have been ok with the rotator
cuff damage without surgery, but because I had the SLAP tear; there's nothing you can
really do. It has to be fixed.
Considering that I had 50 students depending on me to get them through this performance,
I was worried I wouldn't be... I was really thinking how can I put this off, knowing that
those kids were depending on me those kids were depended on me to make it through the
end of May.
We went with, we decided to go with cortisone treatment which we did a couple of treatments
in the shoulder. And it worked. I got, I received the shots in March and I was great. About
the third week in May, I went back to follow up. I was getting a little sore and the shot
was wearing off. My performances were somewhere around the 20th and three days later, I was
on the operating table.
He timed it perfectly knowing that I had my business to think about. He got in there,
fixed it, and I was in and out, well; I was in there a couple of hours. If you've ever
had any other type of day surgery, it's pretty much the same thing except you wake up and
feel like you're in a straitjacket (laughing). Other than that, it's pretty normal.
The first six weeks was not a walk in the park. It was very, very difficult...sleeping
was a big problem. When you're - you know you're like everyone else are - you're used
to sleeping in bed. You have to adjust to sleeping in a chair and upright. I had to
learn to wash my hair and take a shower. Just the every day-to-day stuff becomes more difficult
with one arm, especially when you're right handed and suddenly using your left hand for
everything.
12 weeks out, you feel a little bit more 'human'. Then 18 weeks out, you're starting to feel
like: Ok, this is ok. Once I got my range of motion back, that was huge. Because at
that point..Honestly as a dancer, I had some issues with - I was nervous about being able
to do my job not only as a mom but a dancer: is this ever going to get better? This hurts.
I cannot tell you how thankful and grateful I am that we did it when we did.