High School Anyone Had An Injury Like This?

[OldskoolKYcheercoach]

i wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it happen with my own two eyes:

A girl on my team with phenomenal jumps does a pike, her legs go numb in the middle of the jump, and she crumbles to the ground on the landing.

After a few weeks, and multiple trips to the doctor who said she was "fine." I told her that I would not let her back on the floor until he ordered some kind of imaging of her spine. So she went for an MRI. They brought me a disk with the images and I diagnosed her before they even had the official results. She had a OBVIOUS compression fracture. The location and shape of which could only have been caused by the forceful flexion of her spine in her pike.

Anyone else had a kid break their back because their pike was "too good?"

 

[AndyT_T]

Did she land with straight legs and not absorb? Ive never seen it for jumps but Ive heard of people that do bounding passes (especially on dead floor) getting compression passes.
Didn't last pass on WCSS a few seasons back have compression fractures in her back?

 

[OldskoolKYcheercoach]

No, the shape of the fracture and the location on the vertebrae the only possibility is that it occurred when she flexed her spine. It was like a corned of it was shaved off by the vertebrae above it.

 

[MyGirlCheers]

They say it takes a lot of force to cause a compression fracture - like falling off a building or a major car accident - but my CP got compression fractures of T5 & T6 kicking a ball in PE. She kicked it but over rotated and landed on her back (kind of like Charlie Brown with the football). Even though she was on a soft/cushioned gym floor and she was only 7 years old, she somehow had the force to fracture 2 of her vertebrae right between her shoulder blades.

I wonder if your athlete already had some stress fractures in her lower back making it easier for the compression fracture to happen?

 

[OldskoolKYcheercoach]

They say it takes a lot of force to cause a compression fracture - like falling off a building or a major car accident - but my CP got compression fractures of T5 & T6 kicking a ball in PE. She kicked it but over rotated and landed on her back (kind of like Charlie Brown with the football). Even though she was on a soft/cushioned gym floor and she was only 7 years old, she somehow had the force to fracture 2 of her vertebrae right between her shoulder blades.

I wonder if your athlete already had some stress fractures in her lower back making it easier for the compression fracture to happen?

Possibly...

I will tell you from my experience as a trauma nurse: compression fractures (any fracture of any bone really) are as much about angle of impact, and distribution of force, as amount of impact.

Same amount of force spread out over the length of a bone versus a very focal area of bone makes a difference.

 

[coacha]

So wait, you're saying she piked too hard and gave herself a compression fracture mid-air????? I'm not a doctor (nor do I play one on tv!) but I'm not seeing how the process of piking causes enough stress to do that. Are you sure she didn't do it previously (landing in a pike position on a trampoline while goofing off) and didn't realize she did damage until she jumped later?

 

[OldskoolKYcheercoach]

If you could see this girl's pike you might be more inclined to believe it, but no I can't be sure. The telling piece of evidence for me is the numbness and pain she felt in the middle of the jump. Then, again, the appearance of the fracture on her MRI. Imagine looking at a disk in 2-dimensional picture from the side. It looks like a rectangle. The fractured piece was a triangle at the top, front corner of the rectangle. Looking at it, you could see where if her spine was in a hyper-flexed position, the edge of the disk on top of it would line up with corner of the triangle where it had been "shaved" or compressed off the bone. No one could ever be 100% sure, and I'm not a radiologist; but I do look at a lot of X-rays, CT scans, and MRI's as a "hobby" inside my job.

I posted this to find out if anyone had heard of anything similar. With it being tryout season, we were discussing some of the events of this past year that had impacted the team, the length of her absence being one of them. Then she started telling me about how when she was in middle school, she had a couple of other freakish injuries. I'm kind of curious if she doesn't have some kind of connective tissue disorder.

 

[BeckyySueWho]

Last year, I was performing some lower back stretches (that my chiropractor had recommended) where I was in a ball position and rocked back onto my shoulder blades, and felt the most agonizing shooting pain I had ever experienced in my life. Went from my bum to the top of my knees. At the ripe age of 24, I was told that I was experiencing sciatica. Had a scan and the only thing they found was that I have very very slight spina bifida occulta at my S1, along with "moderate compression of the left common iliac vein by the overlying right common iliac artery" which was never fully explained to me. My doctor seemed very skeptical that either of these is what led to the sciatica and so the origin was never really figured out.

Our bodies are super weird and the strangest injuries can occur from the smallest movements. I once had a flyer come down from a lib and try to "tap back" with her foot, and she snapped her ankle. She didn't come down hard at all, her ankle just gave way. Similarly, we had a base catch a cradle and we heard this deafening crack. She was on the floor and unconscious from the shock in seconds...she snapped her femur. After recovering for 2 years, she came back and it happened again. It was horrifying.

 

[OldskoolKYcheercoach]

Last year, I was performing some lower back stretches (that my chiropractor had recommended) where I was in a ball position and rocked back onto my shoulder blades, and felt the most agonizing shooting pain I had ever experienced in my life. Went from my bum to the top of my knees. At the ripe age of 24, I was told that I was experiencing sciatica. Had a scan and the only thing they found was that I have very very slight spina bifida occulta at my S1, along with "moderate compression of the left common iliac vein by the overlying right common iliac artery" which was never fully explained to me. My doctor seemed very skeptical that either of these is what led to the sciatica and so the origin was never really figured out.

Our bodies are super weird and the strangest injuries can occur from the smallest movements. I once had a flyer come down from a lib and try to "tap back" with her foot, and she snapped her ankle. She didn't come down hard at all, her ankle just gave way. Similarly, we had a base catch a cradle and we heard this deafening crack. She was on the floor and unconscious from the shock in seconds...she snapped her femur. After recovering for 2 years, she came back and it happened again. It was horrifying.

Ouch!!

Maybe I should have named this thread freak-a-zoid injuries...broken femur from catching a cradle qualifies for sure.

 

[cheer25mom]

Weird things happen.

We had a girl is our gym who was a level 5 tumbler break both bones in her forearm doing a roundoff. Nothing appeared to go wrong in the skill, but her forearm was in the shape of an S.

 

[OldskoolKYcheercoach]

Weird things happen.

We had a girl is our gym who was a level 5 tumbler break both bones in her forearm doing a roundoff. Nothing appeared to go wrong in the skill, but her forearm was in the shape of an S.

My friends had a Sr5 team about four or five years ago that had three girls in the same year break finger/hand bones on backhandsprings. Kids will fulls and doubles.

 

[catlady]

Then she started telling me about how when she was in middle school, she had a couple of other freakish injuries. I'm kind of curious if she doesn't have some kind of connective tissue disorder.

I was in a bad car accident and walked away fine, right until I sneezed a couple of weeks later. She may have had an area that had a series of tiny fractures or a hairline and hitting that particular pike was the action that was too much for it to take.

 

[cpersichilli]

Last year, I was performing some lower back stretches (that my chiropractor had recommended) where I was in a ball position and rocked back onto my shoulder blades, and felt the most agonizing shooting pain I had ever experienced in my life. Went from my bum to the top of my knees. At the ripe age of 24, I was told that I was experiencing sciatica. Had a scan and the only thing they found was that I have very very slight spina bifida occulta at my S1, along with "moderate compression of the left common iliac vein by the overlying right common iliac artery" which was never fully explained to me. My doctor seemed very skeptical that either of these is what led to the sciatica and so the origin was never really figured out.

Our bodies are super weird and the strangest injuries can occur from the smallest movements. I once had a flyer come down from a lib and try to "tap back" with her foot, and she snapped her ankle. She didn't come down hard at all, her ankle just gave way. Similarly, we had a base catch a cradle and we heard this deafening crack. She was on the floor and unconscious from the shock in seconds...she snapped her femur. After recovering for 2 years, she came back and it happened again. It was horrifying.

Holy hell :jawdrop:

 

[AScheer]

I have a girl that went to a tumbling class at a local gym to work on skills for tryouts. She was doing layouts into the pit and somehow broke 1 ankle and sprained the other. Had to have surgery the next day to put in 3 screws. I've coached her for 3 years now and I swear she is the most accident prone child I've ever met. We're currently debating which team to put her on, simply because we don't know how long recovery will take and if she'll be back at her current level. Prior to this she was a shoe in for varsity, now we just don't know if we should take the risk or not.

 

[AScheer]

My friends had a Sr5 team about four or five years ago that had three girls in the same year break finger/hand bones on backhandsprings. Kids will fulls and doubles.

I had an equally talented girl break a finger on a bhs a couple of years ago. Took a while to heal and the 2nd day back, she broke a different finger. It was crazy.