2: The Never Healing Injury
By: Rachael Wendell
Tags: Travel, Hiking, Strippers, Psoas, Injury

At the age of 25 I had a young and restless boyfriend who asked me to quit my office job, jump into my car, and strike out across the country with him, on an uncharted and meandering expedition into the great unknown. Being that I had no savings to support this journey, and he had no job, I naturally did the reasonable thing…and became a stripper. Although I prefer the term ‘exotic dancer’, because stripping is a miniscule portion of what we do on stage, and the majority of strippers actually dance.

I, for one, danced wholeheartedly and reveled in having found my artistic niche, regardless of the social hardships that occur in dressing rooms filled with hateful, narcissistic, competitive young women. I would continue to ignore my way through the petty torments of one dressing room after another, as my boyfriend and I hopped from state to state, until eventually we landed back in our home state of Iowa…where I promptly did not go back to my desk job. Instead I danced there, for years, and years, and…suddenly I was 38 and still very much enjoying the stage, and looking forward to all the ways I could capitalize on my age in my 40’s and keep business rolling in. Meanwhile I had become certified at a wonderfully gratifying type of equine bodywork, called Masterson Method, and was eager to get it into my monthly work calendar.

In late spring 2014, after deciding to switch things up and try a new workout in my living room, I suddenly found myself with what seemed to be a deep core muscle injury. I’d never had an injury in my life, other than that one time I sprained my ankle for a few weeks, and the time I had too-much-yoga induced back troubles when I was around 30. So I proceeded as usual…by ignoring it and trying to stretch and ‘work it out’. This seemed to alleviate the pain on some days and exacerbate it on others, depending on exactly what I did. But after a couple weeks of this, the pain progressed to the point of giving me a slight hobble and that stopped me in my tracks.

With some advanced knowledge of core muscle groups, I (with considerable concern) identified the aggravated muscle as my right psoas, the single most fundamental and critical muscle of our entire body in terms of being able to stand, sit, and walk. For most of summer I would be off of dancing and all workouts, and only able to take moderately paced walks without incurring pain in that area.

By late August I was back to work for just one short weekly shift, and not doing stage dancing at all…due to my propensity for going into a dance-induced trance that renders me incapable of reigning my body away from whatever wild movements my thoughtfully selected music sets compel it to execute. This moderation seemed to be working! By September my long term boyfriend, Jeremy, and I were practicing hiking with backpacks on our backs, preparing to head out to Colorado and hike the gorgeous Maroon Bells, which he had set his sights on many months before.

On days when I overdid anything, the pain would well back up. I had to have frank talks with Jeremy about how I might not be able to hike The Bells. He continually reassured me that everything would be fine by then. At that point he was used to my athleticism and resilience. He did not want to examine the possible implications of this injury.

But he was correct. With minimal physical preparation or conditioning on my part, we headed to Colorado later that month and backpacked for three days, traversing over 20 miles of spectacular vistas and trudging over 4 passes above 12,000 feet in altitude. Physically it was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. Placing one foot in front of the other was so difficult at times that I didn’t even know how I was doing it. I just knew I had to.

Luckily, Jeremy and I took turns at getting altitude sickness. Had we both been struck on the same day, we may have made the collective decision to just roll off the side of a mountain and be done with it. But throughout this beautiful, glorious, triumphant, agonizing week, my injury didn’t say a word to me. Not one word. Even three months out of shape, I was strong as an ox.

Back in Iowa, one lazy afternoon a couple weeks later, I skipped through the apartment in my usual ducky mood and flung myself onto the bed as humans are apt to do. In the instant my body bounced upwards from the initial mattress impact, in that fraction of a moment where the legs yank away from the core due to bounce momentum, I felt a sharp pain deep in my right psoas area. This time it was different, not the dull muscle ache it had been before. It was thinner, sharper, and slightly longer. When I told Jeremy the injury was back, I never explained the moment that had caused it. It seemed too simple, too stupid, too tragic, too careless. How could it be that I could hike with the best of them, but would have to monitor my everyday, ordinary, mindless movements and gestures like a hawk?

A couple weeks later, in October, I returned to the club to do my work once more, feeling recovered from the mattress incident. That would be the last time I was to go to work as a dancer.