why i couldnt stop

one thing people have asked me a lot when talking about injuries (and then consequently finding out about all of mine) is how come i got so many finger injuries in one go and why didnt i tell anyone i was hurt. it might sound strange not to have said anything when i could hardly open or close my hand or let myself get injured again after that first time. and more recently why did it take me so long to accept my most recent injury when i had actually been having problem with my arms for months before i finally stopped climbing to rest them. but to me it was never that simple. im going to try to take you into the mind set of a few younger me's to give you an idea of what i was thinking and why it took me so long to accept things. (well thats the idea any way)

a time before the injuries :)

for those who dont know, when i was 14 i injured my fingers (7 of them). it began as one finger that hurt a bit. i didnt say anything and carried on climbing taking less weight on that finger so putting more pressure on the others. this carried on for about a month until they all hurt all of the time. now at this point the sensible thing to do would be tell someone your fingers hurt (ok so the sensible thing to do would be not let them get this bad in the first place but we'll ignore that for the time being). i having all the wisdom that the average 14 year old has decided to keep quiet and let my week holiday to germany (and so week rest from climbing) sort the small inconvenience of my fingers out. naively thinking that they would be better when i got back. but they werent.

just a bit of tape! what to do when all fingers are malfunctioning!

now i know most people at this point will probably be thinking "this kid is a complete idiot is she trying to wreck her body for life?" and to some degree i would have to say i agree with you. but (and its a big but) theres a few things that made my thinking not all to unreasonable. to start i didnt actually know what finger injuries were or that it was even possible to injure your fingers. this seems odd considering the amount of time i spend in climbing centers but i can honestly say i never really thought about why people might be wearing tape on fingers or anything like that i dont think i had even really noticed that people did sometimes have tape on their fingers. (i am an incredibly unobservant person just to clarify that) so i didnt really realise that mine were injured. they were just hurting which of course is a completely different thing.

to me at that time there was another thing. i didnt want to admit any weakness to anyone. and having bad fingers in my eyes was a massive weakness. i was on a small climbing team and the other members of the team were at that point pretty much my only friends and there was no way i would let them know about my fingers as i thought they would just say i was making excuses for bad form and not believe me i also didnt want to let my coaches down or be told i had to not climb. to me at that time giving into anything was weakness and i was so desperate to prove to everyone (including myself) that i was not weak. i was scared i suppose of what they would say and that they wouldnt believe me so i just carried on climbing. it was the only thing i could think of to do and i just assumed they would stop hurting with time.

needless to say they didnt and i ended up taking time off climbing to rest them. this really should have been a lesson learned but it wasnt. one thing i have heard that might explain some of my behaviour is that at the age of 14 i didnt have the mental capacity to "see" the damage i was doing to my body for the simple reason of my brain not being fully developed to do so. i was still a kid really and the damage that i was doing so incomprehensible to me that i didnt comprehend it.

after this injury i was convinced i had learned my lesson. when fingers hurt you stop climbing! seems simple enough but 6 months later i had injured 3 fingers and i was still climbing despite the fact i knew i was hurt.

the day i hurt my fingers again

looking back i know i was being incredibly stupid and even then i knew i really shouldnt be climbing but i had convinced myself that this time it wasnt all bad and that they werent as hurt as the other ones had been. of course i was wrong and i was being stupid but i was scared to admit i was injured again. since my last injuries i wasnt climbing as well as i had been. i have always been a cautious climber but i was trying to be careful not to hurt my fingers any more and somewhat reluctant to push myself too far out of my comfort zone. i know people thought i wasnt trying hard enough but i was so scared of getting hurt again. when i did injure the 3 fingers i didnt want to say anything as i thought people would think i was making up excuses for not climbing well. i also didnt want to take any more time off climbing. last time i had found it quite hard and i wasnt desperate to to repeat it again. so i just carried on climbing even though i knew deep down i shouldnt.

in the end i saw a physio and took 2 months off. i didnt want to but knew that they would just get worse unless i did. my friends were all really supportive and no one made any comments about me just making excuses or anything along those lines. i think because i had seen a physio and got professional advice people took me more seriously than they might have done otherwise. this time though i was determined to learn my lesson when i came to fingers i was going to recover get strong again and find a way to avoid doing this to myself again. my mother on the other hand had different ideas.

on the way home from the physio after i had told her about my fingers and got upset at having to take another summer off she suggested something that to me was quite out of the blue and the worst idea anyone could possibly come up with. maybe since i seem to keep hurting myself climbing i should stop. not just for a few months so that i could recover but stop completely until i had finished growing or preferably in her eyes untill i was 18 had left home and was no longer her responsibility.(as it turns out by this point i had actually stopped growing after reaching the towering height of 154cm!) needless to say this idea didnt go down all that well. i told her under no circumstances would i stop climbing. she said i could do long term damage to my body but i simply replied i would be careful. (ok so i hadnt been all that careful up to this point but ill ignore that) to me quitting climbing wasnt just a bad idea it was pretty much the most stupid idea i think i had ever heard. i was going to get better and i was going to climb again and i was going to avoid getting injured again. end of story thank you very kindly.

unfortunately it didnt really work out like that. i was careful and for the record i havent actually had anything more than a strained pulley since then and that was a few years ago now. i changed the way i climbed and avoided more finger injuries but i wouldnt be sitting here writing a blog on my climbing or lack of climbing if i wasnt currently injured. between those few fingers and my current injury i have had tendonitis in my right elbow (i think it was a pre cursor to my current problem) and i dealt with that quickly and efficiently. but last february when i was in sheffiled with my coach and my right arm hurt while i was warming up my reaction was far from what should have been expected from someone who knew the dangers of injury.

to start with i didnt stop climbing. i topped the climb and on the way down i massaged my arm trying to get rid of the pain. my coach noticed and asked me what was up. i told her my arm hurt but i thought it would be ok. so i got back on the climb. by the time i reached the 3rd clip i knew my arm most definitely was not ok. i told my coach and dropped off the wall. what came next was neither very dignified nor surpirsing, it was as i call it the emotional response to injury. 

it was obvous that i was hurt i knew this it was blindingly obvious my arm had an intense pain right in the center of my elbow i couldnt straighten it at all without the pain increasing and i was cradling it to my body in much the same way as an animal would do when they are hurt. i can remember telling myself that it would be ok and that i wasnt really all that hurt and if i gave it a few minutes it would get better knowing full well it wouldnt. i had some competitions i wanted to do coming up and well i just didnt want to give up climbing if i didnt have to. i talked things through with my coach and she really suggested that i took time off and went to see someone. i argued back that it would get better soon and i would be ok. i said that maybe i should do the comps and then take the time off (ignoring the fact that things could get much worse in that space of time) i was trying to find any way possible to avoid taking the time off even though i knew it was really the only thing i should do.

i think, well i know, that i was scared of being injured again. i was scared of what my friends would think, what my parents would say and how i would cope with having to take more time off. i was scared of losing climbing and the people in it because with out it i didnt know the world i lived in. i was more scared about being injured than i really cared to admit. it wasnt just that my arm was hurting it was the whole concept of injuries. i had dealt with them before but found it hard and this time i wasnt sure if i would cope as well as i had done before.i also didnt want to admit defeat. as silly as it sounds i felt like i was giving in to my body if i agreed to rest it. it lowered my self worth as i wasnt as good as my friends who could train and didnt get injured and i didnt want to be the girl who was always injured as some people were starting to see me so i fought back against it with all my heart.

in the end my coach encouraged me to take the time off and in the end i agreed. after a rather tear filled conversation about looking after your body and doing the right thing i was finally persuaded to see a physio and rest untill such a time the physio thought it was fit to use again. i was told that it shouldnt be too long (as it was rather impossible to foresee the extent of the damage i had done to both my arms at this stage) and i would probably come back stronger as a result of the rest. (if it had only been a month or two i would agree with this however given my current situation im not sure i am going to be stronger on return :P) i resigned myself to the injury and pulled myself back together trying to ignore the niggling feeling in my head that was telling me on no uncertain terms that this injury would be worse than all the others (but im not going to go into that now). i do look back on it and ask myself why it took so much to persuade myself i was injured and why i never would stop.

i supose i do know the asnwers. i was scared of injury, i was scared of what people would say and i thouhgt that it made me weak to be injured so much. i know alot of people struggle to take the tme off they need for injurys. to give up somthing you love (and im many cases have given over your life to) isnt an easy thing. and i would say it can be especially hard for kids who really dont know any better to know when to tell someone they are injured. you get some who will try to find any excuse possible to get out of training as they would rather just climb so will tell you that this or that is hurting and i think it is very easy for those responsible for coaching children to assume that will be the case when someone comes to you claiming to be hurt especially as unless you are experienced in them things such as finger injuries are hard to spot. then you will get the kids who like me will do anything to disguse the fact they are injured and will damage themselves more as a result partly due to the fact they dont think they will be believed. so if any parent of young climbers or coaches of young climbers read this then i hope you will take what your kids say seriously and get it checked out as surely it is better to do that than have them try to push through it and end up like me?

i hope people can learn from my mistakes its about all i can really hope for in regard to those injuries i have had. and i hope that maybe by reading this it might at least persuade one person to ask about that niggle they have been ignoring for a while. if any one wants to know more about my injuries then my first blog - a catalog of injuries http://ailsagraham.blogspot.co.uk/2012_11_01_archive.html ) tells my story with hopefully a few bits that might make you laugh at my stupidity added in to try not to let it become too depressing. but i think for me stopping climbing wasnt a simple thing to do making the right decision on these things often hurts more than the injuries themselves.

hope, change and a few new challenges

well it would be fair to say things are going in the right direction!!! arms are getting better thanks to a good physio who knows whats wrong with my body! im in an almost permanent good mood and things in general a feeling pretty good for me right now.

i think ill start with telling people a little about the arms. as anyone who has read my other blogs will know they seem to have found themsleves in a little bit of a pickle over the last year and a bit and frustratingly it took a whole year to find out what is wrong with them. but now i finally know. to keep things short ill be brief (well as brief as i can be) i have got what my physio is calling tight nerves in my arms. this basically means the the nerves in my forearms and elbows dont run through my arms well and so go numb a lot when they are over stretched and cause pain for many things often when i least expect it. this being rather annoying and also means i have restricted movement in my arms. all rather frustrating to be honest. 

but hope is finally here and i am recovering. i have a stretch that i do every day to basically stretch out the nerves and slowly increase the mobility in my arms again. im still quite far below  what would be considered normal but its a hell of a lot better now than it was 3 months ago when i started getting treatment. unfortunately due to it being a nerve problem its taking its time in getting fixed. (my physio said that if i have a full range of movements back by christmas i will be doing well!) but i should be able to start my climbing rehab this summer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
im just a tad happy about that ;)

my stretch sheet so i can keep track of my progress

so with that rather good news comes a few new challenges. the first of these being my body.now its fair to say that i didnt really cope with being injured all that well especially in the first few months. i didnt eat properly sometimes completely over eating sometimes only eating chocolate and sometimes not eating at all. the result of this was i put on weight. now if i look at myself i see a girl who although is really relatively thin and fit looking has a bit too much extra weight for a climber. those months of over eating have resulted in a band of excess flesh on my stomach and around my waist. not i know there isnt really much (about 8mm) but there is still more than i would like and really it would be good to have it gone when i get back on the wall. the other problem i see in my body i the lack of upper body muscles. now i know this isnt surprising i have been injured for over a year but for someone who used to have nicely defined biceps and shoulder muscles (they were never massive but they were obviously there)i do look rather puny. 

now losing weight is possible i have tried running but that made my arms numb something i have got to avoid if im going to recover with any decent speed (all things are relative) but i have found that swimming is possible provided i dont use my arms (before anyone thinks anything stupid i use a float to keep the top half of my body up otherwise i would head plant the bottom of the pool and give myself brain damage). this works rather nicely i just need to do more of it! also food is important to help out from that side of things i have a blanket ban on sweets, cake, chocolate, crips and things of that nature untill i leave home. hopefully plenty of exercise and healthy eating will help get me back to a level of physical fitness that will make climbing recovery much easier.

the next few things are not really climbing related just want to mention them. these are the changes that im getting very excited about. i finish school in less than 2 months! im also going travelling starting in canada in november so i have a lot to look forward to. i have got a few pesky exams in the way first but then i am free. i move to scotland on the 27th of june (counting down the weeks :D) and so life is looking pretty good. i will leave home, have a job and start climbing all in the same month. i dont think my life could be looking much better really. :)

oh and can you belive it i have managed to write a short blog! (anyone who has read my others will see why this is impressive ;))

everything happens for a reason? (part 3)

ok so this is the last of my reasoning blogs. ive covered a fair bit really about what i have learned and in some cases what i feel people can learn and now its time to conclude with a few more lessons and then how i see things.

so

lesson: 9 how to improve while not climbing
now this can be incredibly hard. ill tell you now that during my current injury i have done very little so far but in times gone by i have managed to improve my physical climbing performance even when taking time out. its very simple really you just need to do stretches and core exercises as often as you can. (i managed core 5 times a week during one injury and came back with a pretty beast core!) unfortunately there are many reasons that make keeping the motivation up to this damn hard!

if im honest i dont actually know anyone who has managed to keep up a lot of physical exercise if they didnt normally while managing a long term climbing injury. now if you're off for anything less than a month no excuses! longer than that and motivation can start to slip. if you have no idea when it will all get better in my experience then well lets just say that exercise is neglected slightly! all this said it is still really important to manage if possible apart from anything else it keeps your moods up.

there are other ways however to improve while not actually climbing. and i have been trying quite hard to put them in place. its important to know your weaknesses as well as your strengths and i know for a fact my head has often held me back in my climbing. so ive been trying to address this. from this point of view i feel that most people can do something to help with their climbing while not on the wall you just have to find it and that can be hard.

lesson: 10 take a step back and appreciate what you got
so this can be kinda hard to do at times when in the rut of injury but when i started doing this most of the time i felt better (sometimes nothing can lift my mood and if i look in the wrong direction, well, lets just say outcomes are not positive!). being able to look at things and know that im glad i did that or im a better/changed/happier/more content person because i climb then i reckon you're doing something right.

from a personal stand point i really feel that even though i have had so many injuries climbing has done a lot for me. yes i have learnt from my injuries but without climbing i have no idea where i would be. when i take a step back i can look at brilliant friends, great trips out and a feeling of community i have never felt before.

so it would seem that in many ways i could say the injuries i have had have happened for a reason. over the past few injury-riddled years i have become a happier, more confident and more reasonable person.(well i reckon so anyhow) if there is a force that controls parts of our lives and makes things happen so that we can learn from them  then well it seems to be doing a damn good job.

but i got a problem with the fate ect argument for things. to me it doesnt make sense i believe that nothing will ultimately happen for any outside reason (by this i mean no external forces control our lives) and yet it seems at times that all my injuries have done something positive for me. i have learned things that i needed to at times when i needed to. i think this is because as a human being (just wanted to clarify this as according to some im not one) my brain is tuned to try to make the best of a bad situation. i have found the good things that could be taken from my situations and learned from them. stuff that i could no longer neglect and because of this i just had to deal with them. it could have been now, then or years to come but i managed to learn those things and for that im glad.

so one thing i will say to everyone no matter who you are what you're doing or how great or shit your life is at the moment youve got to learn from the good and the bad and take the rough with the smooth. im 18 and for the past 12 years ive been learning how to deal with crap. and when things got better i felt like i had come out the other side a better person. injuries can tear you apart. you cant let them. find a way to get them to help you in any way you can and things wont seem as bad. so for me did everything happen for a reason. no. but i found reasons to make things happen.

everything happens for a reason?(part 2)

So. I have started off by talking about the things I HAD to learn if I was to get anywhere in life. How I started to pull my head from the sand and try to do the right things to make life better for myself, and how somehow the injuries helped me. All that was very personal to me things that only I really have to learn but now im going to widen the scope really. What I say wont apply to everyone but some of it im sure will apply to some people so here goes.

Lesson 4: patience
Ahh. Something some are much better at than others and something I like to think im reasonably good at being but when it comes to injuries this is HARD! Any dedicated climber (something I count myself as being despite my lack of climbing in the past year) can tell you that taking time off isnt really what they want to be doing. So when you're injured and you're told to take time off it is very easy to try to cut as many corners as possible. I mean do I really NEED to take this time off? Do I HAVE to only do gentle climbs for the next month? And when a climb is staring at you in the face with CLIMB ME!!! written all over it somtimes you just cant help yourself.

I know this all too well. To be tempted by a climb that is just so perfect for you it seems silly to wait any longer than you have to. Who cares that you have 7 just recovering fingers, or had tendonitus in your elbows, I mean its not like you can damge them on these super small crimps and over hanging walls.( its always good to know your heart is in control isnt it?).

It can be so easy to lose your way when on the road to recovery. When your body is getting better and you're allowed back on the wall, or when the pains have almost gone away. You can jump on one climb and wreck months of work. I know this. Ive made these mistakes. My friends have made these mistakes. But sometimes you just have to be patient. Your body will recover in its own time. It can be hard if things seem to take forever but taking that time is well worth it in the end. Be patient and WAIT  for when YOUR body is ready to climb and well you might not end up in the situation I have found myself in which can only be a good thing!

im the patient sort, was hanging around here in the cold for ages!

lesson 5: im not invincible
now as a child (like most children) i was under the  impression that nothing could really hurt me. much like in cartoons if i got run over by a car i would obviously just peel myself from the road and carry on walking. nothing could really hurt me for long. and well i kinda carried this though to my climbing as well. for the first few years it didnt matter but when your fingers are so badly injured in both your hands that even holding onto a jug causes massive amounts of pain or you have shooting pains up and down your arms. well this mind set might not be too useful after all.



get my point?

after my first bout of finger injuries i returned to climbing with the mind set that it would never happen again. people kept warning me i had to be extra careful now but well, i was 14 and not really very inclined to listen to the advice of others. i didnt think it would be possible for me to hurt my fingers again. i mean they were better werent they? so i refused to change much about my climbing and just carried on as before. it was only after i injured them again and had to spend another 2 months off the following year did it even start to dawn on me that perhaps those people had been right. maybe, just maybe my body wasnt as invincible as i wanted to believe it was. i might not be a super human after all.

now this mind set i would imagine would be more common to children but i know for a fact a friend of mine has come back from one injury then gone and hurt her fingers as she just didnt think it would be a problem. i know myself that when you think you fix well you think you fix but its important to remember that your body is more fragile than you might think. its better to learn this from reading it on the web than by reinjuring your body. so take this one from me. no matter what you think or who you are YOU ARE NOT INVINCIBLE!!! alright? better not to test out any theory you have. i learned it the hard way you dont have to!

lesson 6: things are not as bad as they seem (well most of the time)
so it was time for me to start putting things in perspective a little bit more and well being injured is a good method of practicing. what ever my injuries were i still knew it would get better i would climb again and although its easy to feel like the world is falling apart it really isnt.

for me this was needed in more than just climbing. i was (much less so these days) the type of person who got hung up on EVERYTHING. (ok so people who know me well will say i still am but in the last few years i have got a lot better at putting things in perspective). not climbing was a big deal (still is) but i have learned that its not quite as big as it can seem and its incredibly important to be able to rationalise things when they go wrong.

 in a previous blog i have said how i can calm/comfort myself when feeling down mainly by putting things back in perspective a little. (i have since been told that talking to yourself works!) by learning to rationalise things to myself it has allowed me to look for the things that have a more positive twist to them. its easy when at the beginning of a journey to think it looks very long and very hard but often it is easier than you think it will be. injuries are like that. they are hard, they hurt but ultimately most of the time you recover after not too long. (says the girl who hasnt climbed for the best part of a year) at times it will be hard but there are millions of things that could be worse then having a strained pulley or tendonitis. so be strong and get through it!

on top of the world, well north africa and it only took us 3 and a bit hours!

lesson 7: determination
this is incredibly important for anyone who wants to achieve anything in their life. so most people really. i for one have a long list of things i want to achieve, some in climbing some not. to give a few examples i want to climb 8a before im 20 (injury permitting), climb 8b before 25 and well climb as hard as i can and see where i get after that 9a would be good ;). i also have another thing i desperately want to achieve. it has nothing to do with grade or physical achievement but in some ways would mean more to me. i want to not be injured. it sounds simple really. im only going to achieve any of these things if i recover fully from my current problems and for that im going to need almost all the determination i was born with.

being injured does make you a determined person but i have found it has helped me channel into more productive things. and sometimes when hope has been drifting away you need to grasp any last reserves of the stuff to get through it. i remember talking to a friend about my injuries. i was explaining to him about what i had done and i mentioned that i could wait however many months i needed to to get back to climbing. to this he said "if you stay motivated long enough" to me this was odd of course i would. nothing was going to stop me getting back on a climbing wall this i knew. i also know that its my stubbornness and determination that will in time get me back.

put it simply if i wasnt a determined person, i would have given up on climbing after the second set of finger injuries. i didnt. i couldnt.

lesson 8: self belief
as a child i never really believed in myself. i supose i was so used to being put down by others it was only natural to do the same to myself. i could pretty much persuade myself out of anything. i would look at a climb decide where i would fall off and sure enough i would have fallen by that point. its not really a very productive way to be improving your grade really. so its something i needed to work on. badly.

while tradding i actually had to believe i could do it right!

seeing as i have had so much time on my hand its somthing ive tryed to address. instead of climbing and trying to fix the way i think along the way i am now trying to fix my head. and something about the immense lack of climbing in my life has helped. a bit. when you've been injured (a lot) there can come a point where you start to doubt pretty much everything. from the will i be able to go climbing again. to the even more horrific (and often brought on by other people not believing you and thinking you are making excuses for lack of form) what if this is all in my head. now that thought can be a killer. you hear so much about people whose pain or problems are not physical and i found that when people start to doubt you you can often doubt yourself. there have been times over this past year where i have stopped and thought about that but now my self confidence has grown enough to tell me to put those peoples ideas out my head.

it can be really hard but some things just need learning and for me that was one of them and im sure there will be others who need to learn to believe in themselves a little more. over the past year my self confidence has grown massively. that might have something to do with the fact i have been trying to address that particular issue (something i probably wouldnt be doing if i wasnt injured) but i have also had to push myself to believe in myself and not let the doubt take over. so one thing i have really learnt is how to be confident in my own abilities and ideas.

so thats part 2. only part 3 left now! in my next blog i shall be concluding my long list of all that can be learned by being injured and i will also try to explain my views on everything happening for a reason as so far being injured seems to have helped me along the general life road.

everything happens for a reason? (part 1)

ok so what i want to try to talk about (try being a big word here) is the slightly less bad side of being injured. its quite hard to define what i mean by this. positive could be used i suppose but really being injured is not a positive experience at all. the better side of things might work but again i feel that seems a bit too good. all things considered injuries aren't nice but i suppose what im trying to get to is that in a way they're not all bad?

many people have said to me through my many injuries that all things happen for a reason. being injured gives you time to think and reconsider things as such. a break is never a bad thing. ok so they may have a point. in fact i would say they do have a very good point. i have found you can learn a lot from being injured so I'm going to try to discuss it. one thing i will say though is that everyone will learn different things and well perhaps i had quite a lot i needed to learn and still quite a lot im still learning. (i think i may have confused you by this point so i shall give a bit of background history of me so you can get an idea of me)

i reckon the easiest thing to do is go back about 4 years to me aged almost 14. now at this time it would be fair to say i was rather unhappy most of the time. i was having an interesting time at school and had been for the past 8 years. my self esteem was pretty much at rock bottom and most of the time i hardly talked. when i did it tended to be one word answers. if you saw me smile you should have probably taken a picture to prove it as it happened so little. i was a moody, scared (of people mainly) and rather unhappy kid at that point. didnt trust anyone (inculding belayers which is not useful for climbing) and lived my life by a rather odd set of rules to try and avoid any more hurt than i had experienced already. i had built up the wall around me for so long i didnt even know how to see over the top and all in all it wasnt a great place to be.

it would be fair to say at that point that climbing was the one good thing i had. it was where my friends were it was the only place i got anywhere near feeling happy. when i climbed i didnt have to think about anything else going on in my life at all. it was teaching me how to trust people something i had lost years ago. i still wouldnt trust easily but i was getting towards being able to trust a few friends to belay me and such. i had also started to climb reasonably well. my head was holding me back massively but things didnt seem as bad when i was in a climbing centre. there were still problems though my lack of trust meant i refused to fall off lead and was very nervous of falling off boulders although i was getting better at that. i also have a fantastic ability to talk myself out of things. this really didnt help (somehow) and caused problems for me in competitions. my self belief was still practically non existant but when climbing it was a tad better than other parts of my life.

as i have said in previous blogs i had pretty much buried myself deep within climbing. it was my comfort blanket for the real world. my head was buried so deeply in the sand it would have probably taken a good few days to get down to it even with heavy drilling equipment. so not the perfect time to get injured then? (ok so there is never a great time but i was so heavily dependent at that point it really didnt help)

so back grounding over time to move on to what im really driving at. i was 14. i was injured and the world had ended!(fine, the world may not have really ended but i sure felt like it had)

lesson 1: trust
climbing had taught me a fair amount about trust. i could now trust someone with my life. (not many people but in comps i would happily trust total strangers to belay me but at the same time if a member of my family was at the other end of the rope it would be a very different story.) so this was progress but much to my surprise i learned more about trust from not climbing than from climbing.

now id only been injured a week but it was still upsetting me a lot. i was standing in ratho watching my friends climb and started crying (i cry a lot if you didant already know) one of my friends saw and decided what i needed to do was stick my head under one of the hand dryers in the toilets (dont ask me why) so she grabbed my wrist and off we went. from there i did something i hadnt done for years. i started to talk about "things". i had bottled up my emotions for pretty much 8 years and now for the first time they were literally spilling out of me. (in hindsight i feel very sorry for the 2 people stood through all this i think we were there for the best part of an hour and they very patiently listening to all i had to say). for the first time in about 8 years i had trusted people with secrets that i had sworn to myself never to tell. and it felt as though a massive weight had been removed from my shoulders.

now im not going to claim that i only did this because of not being able to climb. i would have probably learned not to bottle everything up in time. but for me i think it helped. not climbing had tipped a balance that had been ready to go for a long time. once the flood gates were opened progress could start to be made. i learned to talk to others and listen to them. that day i got lots of useful advice which helped me greatly. i have continued to work on my ability to trust people and now 3 and a half years, 12 finger injuries and many many conversations later it would be fair to say im getting there.

lesson 2: how to use spare time
due to my some what lacking social life i tend to have a fair amount of spare time. seeing as practically all my socialising is done within climbing centres when i cant climb my spare time seems to take over. on that day in ratho i was given a few ideas of what i could do with the masses of time i now had. previously i tended to slip into climbing day dreams when i had nothing else to do and lose myself in them. this however wasnt very productive and tended to make me miss climbing more. i needed a new strategy to use my spare time.

the ideas i was given ranged hugely. i wasnt quite sure what to think about some of them but  here they are:
1) get a boy friend?!?! erm what? ok so the idea was then teach them to climb. i can't say i thought much of this idea really. the small problem being i didnt want to be in a relationship with anyone.
2) write a book. ok so it would keep me entertained but i had nothing i could really write about so this was a non starter as well.
3) do lots of core. ughh i hated core at the point. no way was this happening.
4) spend some time thinking about things going on in your life and try to adress them. hmm ok this might have something.
5) help out with younger climbers at the local wall. again seemed good to me.

in the end i went with 4 and 5. i enjoyed helping out with the young kids at the local wall so went down as often as i had when i was climbing most weeks. this helped keep me involved and seeing my friends which helped the time pass hugely. thinking was not something i had been doing much of. it was far easier to just climb when things got too much but now i really needed to start adressing things. i could no longer bury my head in the sand. so i started going out on my bike for a few hours most days and found that i could think in a less emotional way about things i had previously kept hidden. after talking about them i was able to think about them. this was hugely liberating for me and marked the start of my journey of growing up. (ok part of me really does not want to grow up at all so is planing to stay  young and immature forever but i wouldnt want to be old and boring). so by being injured i was forced to think about my life and become aware of things i could do to make it better for myself. things i had previously not tried to do because it was a lot easier to just go climbing.

lesson 3: its ok to ask for help
i have always been very independent. often i refuse help even though i really want some. part of this is because i always have. as a child i would never really expect help unless i had no other option. i was scared that people would see needing help as a "weakness" of sorts and i didnt want anyone to think i was weak. so i did everything i could for myself with as little outside interference as possible. but something I have learned through my injuries especially the one i have right now is you cant do everything for yourself all of the time and some times its ok to ask for a bit of help every now and again.

within climbing we help each other a lot whether it is giving beta, belaying or spotting for a friend.  i had grown used to this over time and it was one of the things i loved about climbing. i felt safe in climbing so things like mutually helping others and getting help in return didnt seem so strange. but its only been in the last year or so that i have been abe to branch this out to my normal life. somthing i never thought i could do.

 recently i have had to ask for help as i cant do everything i used to. my arms have a bad habit of stopping and hurting so much and I end up hopping about and swearing under my breath which is not uncommon on occasions. but ive needed to learn these lessons. now seeing as i cant use them how i used to i have had to ask for help. help to fix them, help to fix me and help to deal with all the emotions that come with it as previously described.

Trust!

this blog wouldnt have happened if i had never been injured but im not doing this alone. the offer of help from a friend is what prompted me to really give it a go. she gave me the confidence to write it, she reads everything through before i post it to make sure its spelled correctly and makes sense but she also gives me the confidence to write what i really think. shes helped me so much but i would never have learned to accept her help if it hadnt been for the injuries. although they have hurt me more than i can say they have taught me many things.

looking back it can often seem to me that i got injured at points of my life when i needed to change things. and in their own small way the injuries gave me a chance to start to make those changes. the things i have mentioned in this blog are all very personal. most people will not be needing to learn to trust or understand that getting help is ok but i did and now progress has been made. i have written here about a few small things that relate directly to me but in the continuation of this i will talk about the more general side.

one thing i would like to say is that there are many inspirational people i have met who have helped me find things i need to learn and who have helped me learn them. they have showed me how to stay positive and make a success of what would otherwise be something that could crush you.

recently i learned a man (john ellison) i have often seen at competitions and who i have always respected greatly for his enthusiasm and willingness to help everyone no matter who they are (he has help cheered me up many times before when i was upset at my performance and always has a kind word to say to no matter how busy he seems if you look like you need it)  has got terminal cancer. this is far bigger than any amount of injuries but he is not letting it stop him. climbers against cancer seems to have taken over the internet within climbing circles. john is using his illness to help as many people as possible. the t shirts have been worn by many influential climbers and his message is being spread fast.

for me it carries 2 meanings. one is that no matter how bad things seem we can make a success of them in a small way if we try and the other is we must never just lie down and let things happen. something good can come out of any bad situation. i would like to say that i have found john extremely inspiring with his ability to deal with something as big as cancer. i find it hard to cope with not climbing but when i look at him it gives me strength to carry on and shows me just how important human spirit is. and becasue of this and because i want to do something in my own small way to help john and cac (the money raised goes to cancer research) im going to donate 1 penny per every read of this blog to cac and ask everyone who reads this to get a tshirt to help support the cause. thanks :)   www.climbersagainstcancer.org
in my next blog im going to talk about the more general things i think you can learn from injury. the stuff that may take a bit of looking for but we can all find. in the mean time anyone who is having a bad time with injuries. please look at john for an example of how to cope with a bad time! hes amazing.(i cant say im a great example but he really is and we can all learn from him!)

i cry a lot

the first thing i would like to say is that im blown away by the level of interest my blog has created. if im honest i thought that maybe about 20 people (all of who would know me) would be a good number of people to read this and that really cataloging my injuries may be a bit of a waste of time. well its safe to say ive been proved massively wrong. it seems people from all over the world have read this and that i can become a warning to other young climbers about the risks of injuries and the importance of listening to your body. so please any climbers out there who have a niggle or a twing treat it carefully and do the right thing! i beg you.

so that over and done with and with a slightly new perspective on what i want to achieve with this blog i'll move on to my next post (ill try to make it a bit shorter than the last!) as you can see from the title its not all that a cheery subject. i want to talk about the emotional side of what its like to be injured for a climbing obsessed teen. some people may feel i'm over the top that i should be more reasonable and just deal with it and to those people i will say to you that everyone is different and we all react in different ways to bad things. also the way we react depends heavily upon the circumstances in other parts of our lives. if you want to judge me on what i say then go for it but i reacted the way i did and i'm not ashamed of it either.

 im not going to go through my injuries like last time and talk about them one by one i reckon i can get the point across much better in a different way. but what i will tell you is this. time is the most important thing to give to injuries if you want to heal properly and it is also the hardest thing of all to give. it can seem like an eternity as i know it has done for me even in the short time spans. when i hurt my finger for the first time 6 weeks was all i needed and yet it felt like the end of the world. but compared to where i am now 10 months into an injury i know will most likely take at least another 8 months 6 weeks is nothing. anyone who has had short term injuries will feel bad they are most likely to get upset as i have done many times. when i hurt my fingers and then went to watch a competition i cried when i saw my friends climb. why? because i wanted to climb as well and even though i knew in the not to distant future i would climb again my emotions got the better of me and i ended up in tears.

so for anyone who is right now suffering from a short term climbing injury i will tell you this. please dont be ashamed of feeling emotional if you do feel that way but know it will get better and know that you will get back on the wall/rock again soon and as long as you take care all will be good. i learnt this and yes i may have cried but hey im a teenage girl who cries a lot so its not really that surprising.

i now want to move on to what will be the hardest thing i think ive ever tried to write about. i want to try to talk about long term injuries and how they have made me feel emotionally. the physical side i find is a lot easier to deal with. things hurt so you adapt and change so as to accommodate them and try to reduce pain. thats far and away the easy part. what is not so easy is to find a way to cope with the feeling and emotion that flood over me at different times and i think that it may be the case that only people who have had long term injuries will completely understand it all. but i will try to make it so that when people read this (especially young climbers) they can see how bad it can be and my hurt can be used as a warning to them. dont let it get this far. listen to your body and if it hurts stop!

climbing was everything and without it i dont know who i am. i am a climber. its that simple. it feels like there is a massive hole im my life. this biggest thing i lived for is gone and now a gaping big hole has been cut right through me. i feel like a hollow shell. all the good things that i loved about my life have leaked out from my feet and left the body that is me in a rather robotic like state. i function and go about the list of instructions that are my daliy life with out much thought most days and only i can see the scars that have been left behind. the circuitry that is my head got a bit messed up as my life blood drained from me and now those impulses that move my arms,neck and upper back dont work as well as they should. but i still muddle my way through life on the out side at least almost as normal.

on the inside though im falling apart. its a rather well known fact that sporty people who get injured or have to stop for what ever reason for a longish length of time get quite down and can become depressed and well i reckon that pretty true of me. its incredibly hard to describe the emotion i feel towards climbing. i miss it so much that it hurts way more then my arms ever will and sometimes it can become too much. when this happens i just stop completely. on those days i can just sit and do nothing at all. even at school. people have become used to seeing me just do nothing and it can last whole weeks. sometimes even the smallest thing such as being told to copy down work in class can make me cry. not because its hard or i dont want to do it but more because im so not with it im so far away and so not in the right mind that i simply can not comprehend why it matters when really all i want to do is climb. these moods can be very destructive and i do all i can to avoid them. but its very hard to do this all of the time and sometimes i just let go.

one of the places i find hardest to be are climbing centres especially when my friends are competing and i am watching. i have often been asked why i put myself through the day at these events. well the simple answer is that all my friends are climbers pretty much and i want to see them and i want to be there and i just can not separate myself from climbing. i just cant. ratho (in scotland) has come to hold a bit of a strange place in my heart. i think now i have been there more times to watch other than climb myself and pretty much every time ive been there i have cried. sometimes its on waking in and seeing my friends on the wall. i will just burst into tears and cry till i feel better. other times i only start when someone askes me if im ok. ill give you a recent example:

BLCC ratho 2012. i havent climbed for 8 months. i managed the hellos how are yous good to see yous and all the rest ok. i got though the demos and stuff without much problem and had been there about 2 hours. it was starting to get to me but i was coping. i told myself it would be ok that i could mange and that i would get back to climbing i just had to weight. i was keeping hold of things ok. that was until robbie (phillips) came to talk to me. (ive got to know him through nat (berry) who is helping me with a school project about climbing) he asked me how i was. i told him i was fine and promptly burst into tears. to this he asked if i was sure. yes i said i was (ok maybe not its hard to convince someone you're ok when crying your eyes out. somehow) i couldnt explain how i felt at that point. i missed climbing so much i cant put it into words ( if that kinda explains it) it took me about 2 hours to stop crying completely. people kept asking if i was ok and i kept bursting into tears. (so please anyone who knows me if it looks like ive been crying DO NOT ask if im ok cause youll set me off again) but thats how things are now when i see climbing i want to climb.

then comes this past weekend. i was in liverpool to watch the BMC  open youth. (i noticed there was lots of talk about injuries and responsibility towards young climbers) apart from a small slip i got to mid day before it got too bad. but i couldnt make the okness last. i ended up curled up on the floor crying for about 2 hours. (i know this sounds like a very long time but i was having some difficult conversations) most people told me the stuff i already knew. it would get better and i would get back to it again. i just had to wait it out. there was also a moment of mild relief when i was told by another young climber who had been out for a year due to injury that she also has cried alot for seemingly no reason. most of the time when people try to tell me they know how it feels i appreciate the fact they are trying to help and cheer me up but at the same time i know they dont. in this case though i knew she did and that made me feel a little better. but what i brought away from me after those long 2 hours is that it doesn't make sense to sit for too long with your feet pressed against your legs as they get really stiff and that no matter what I AM A CLIMBER and that will not be taken from me i wont let it. i can get though whatever hurt because i want to get to the other side so badly i will find a way of getting there.

to tell you the truth i am very scared. what if i dont get better? what if i can never climb again? these things i try not to think about because when i do the world might as well have stopped. i dont know how i would cope if i could not climb at all for the rest of my life. most of the time i dont even go here because its so big and its so scary i just cant. i dont have the words to describe how this feels so that will have to do. its too big to comprehend. but i thought i should mention it. please dont hurt your body so much that this is a possibility.

so thats the main 2 raw emotions that i feel a lot at the moment. most of the time i put a face on. i go about my robotic life and manage ok just about. there are things i enjoy (slacklining, seeing my friends and when i can remove myself from it watching others climb i loved watching the world cups this year and i even got my tech teacher watching the womens qualification (bouldering) for the world championships) but sometimes the emotions i have just decide to hit me like a train. they are so big and so powerful they just take over. often when this happens at home i curl up on my bed and cry. i then talk myself through it (something i have been good at from a young age) i get back to robot me and make it look like nothing has happened. 

the conversation with myself often goes a bit like this:
me:come on kiddy, you can get through this you just have to be strong!
me:but what if they dont get better what if i dont recover?
me you WILL  get better and come out the other side it just takes time ok?
me: i dont want to give it time. f**k the rest of my life i want to climb now! i dont care if i screw it up forever just let me climb.
me: you're being stupid. ok giving it time is bloody hard but you CAN get through this and when you do you will be stronger because of it.
me: sod that.
me: look theres not point getting this wound up. you have your whole life ahead of you you're only young kiddo. you know you're doing the right thing and it wont last forever. pull yourself together and just get on with the things that are happening now. you cant change whats happened to you just have to get  through this. alright kid?
me:ok, i suppose you're right, but i WILL climb again and i will climb good things and climb hard and be the best i can be.
me:exactly this is just a small hicup really it will get better and you can do anything you set your mind to. take this as an opportunity to become a better climber when you get back to it kid. there is so much you can learn but you just have to wait.
me: ok i can do this and i will do this. (sigh) wipe away tears smile a little.

(right just to clarify i do seem to be in the habit of treating myself as a child. bit odd but hey im ok with it. i also have firm belief that i will climb hard (ambition is climb 8a out doors at some point) and well im stubborn as hell so ill get through it.)

now i may not be doing a great job at keeping this short but these are a few more small things that I have to talk about.

only a faint mark of where my calouse used to be :'(

ill start with my hands. now climbers have callouses. fact. and well i kinda liked mine. they meant i could never forget climbing. to me it was like  a symbol of who i was. they were an intrinsic part of me those callouses. small things can make a big difference. now 10 months since i last went on a climbing wall i will sometimes look at my hands. those callouses are gone. the first time for 8 years they have not been there. a part of me that has been constant for almost half my life has left and now only a faint scar is left behind. but i must admit they have taken rather a long time to go completely much to my surprise and even now the skin where they used to be is slightly rougher than on the rest of my hands. for someone who was almost proud of the dead skin lumps that formed a small mountain range on my fingers and palm this is a small thing that i miss alot. (ok i may be a bit odd in this respect but like i have said before im happy as me)

climbing shoes! that actually fit. shame i dont get to ware them these days

the other thing that can set me off a little is climbing shoes. it took me a long time to find a pair that fitted well (i have odd feet) but 2 weeks before i got injured i found some. now they sit with the rest of my climbing gear in the bottom of my cupboard. sometimes when i see them i can't help but put them on. there have been a few occasions when i have found myself sitting on my bedroom floor looking at my feet squashed into my climbing shoe. i will then proceed to traversing them around the edge of the skirting board. i know this is not climbing at all but its the closest i get these days. when i forget myself slightly i will lock my arms off and sit on my knuckles when i do this. (i really shouldn't do this as it hurts my arms but i do have an habit of forgetting). i find a small joy in feeling my toes work along that small edge and it makes me miss climbing even more but i still do it. i find that just having my feet in climbing shoes brings small but painful pleasures.

and finally something that is very hard to see but is having a major affect on me right know. anyone who sees a lot of me will know i look tired most of the time and yet im doing pretty much nothing with my life. this i found quite confusing for quite a while. but something i have realised if that keeping my self in check is a massive effort emotionally and this is rather draining. ive learned to not think too hard about climbing too much of the time ive learned how to carry on and do other things and how to make it seem like im fine and everythings ok even when its not. but all these things take effort even when you dont realise you're doing them and this means im tired very often. its also impossible to keep up all of the time. as i said earlier i cry alot often when something climbingy happens or i re connect with it for a short period of time. it breaks though the defences i have put up and im left vulnerable to the wash of emotions that not climbing brings. every so often i curl up on my bed and cry. at these times i feel very alone and very far away from the world i love. but anything worth having is also worth fighting for. so i will keeping going because climbing is the sport i love.

so that is about it. thats how it feels to be me right now. i hope that i got across the emotion that i feel and how big an impact on my life that not climbing is having. i want people to be able to learn from my mistakes and see not just the physical side of being injured but the side i feel that aint talked about but can make just as much if not more difference to the person affected. i dont want people to feel sorry for me either i just want people to understand what its like to have a long term injury so hopefully they will not do what i have done. so i hope you have learned from this. i hope a few lessons can be taken away from it and that people will treat their bodies with respect. ive said this a lot already but please listen to your body. if something hurts stop! and get proper medical advice. i beg you. my next blog will have a slightly different message and i hope this first trio will make people think about injuries and do the right thing. i had to learn these lessons the hard way and i hope you can learn from me  and not repeat them. so young climbers climb hard but take care. parents keep and eye out for things a please take and mention of pains seriously not just think excuses are being made. and coaches please be aware of the damge that can be done to young bodies and know enough about injuries to recognise the basic signs.

im going to finish this blog with a quote i was told (from someone who read my last blog)
“Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end.”
 edward Whymper

a catalog of injurys

The first thing i thought i would do is to give a bit of an injuries history so that anyone who doesn't know me very well and anyone who isn't aware of the injuries i have had can see why i talk so much about them.

quick facts: i have had 12 finger injuries (not including micro strains)
                                                tendonitis in my right elbow
                                 un known injury affecting both arms neck and back
all within a 4 year time period.

the best place to start is probably at the start. (unsurprising that) but to be honest im not 100% on when the start is so i'll go from here. when i was 13 a climbing team was established at my local wall and i was one of the members. we got regular coaching twice a week and messed about a lot pushing each other's climbing and generally becoming better climbers with aims to compete in national competitions and get on the gb team (from the original 9,3 are now team gb members). i loved the new set up and the people who i could now climb with on a weekly basis.(some are now my best friends). i climbed hard and although i often messed about i did improve a lot in that first year. things were going well. i had made it to the BRYCS final finishing 3rd in my region with only about 12 points between me and my friend sarah (pashley) who came 2nd. (for anyone who doesn't know the scoring that's the same as 4 holds higher over 18 climbs) so it was damn close. we were ultra competitive(still are) and now all that was left was to see who beat who in the final. 

BRYCS 2009 before i ever got injured!

in the few months we had between the regionals and the final i pushed hard. i was now climbing about 7a ish and had found a favourite style of climbing. crimps on slight overhangs and technical moves. i had good balance for these and could work them out quite quickly. seeing as i was good at these types of climbs i soon spent more and more time climbing crimps and all holds small. it was going well fingers were getting strong and i was having a great time. i felt that i should have a decent chance of doing well in the final and all was good.

during that time i kept a diary sort of thing about my climbing (which has turned out to be quite useful and i dont really have much recollection of that time). the first time i hurt a finger was on the 9th of june. according to my 14 year old self "my finger randomly started hurting" hmm  not good. being young and naive this caused more annoyance than worry so when ashleigh (my coach) turned around to talk to someone else i jumped on a climb i had been working despite the fact i had been told not to climb. to me this seemed reasonable i mean its only one sore finger how bad could it get? my frustration at this stupid (my opinion at the time) climbing ban was summed up when i wrote "i wasn't even allowed to do frenchies" and i dont think i even liked them. this was the start of what would become a problem that would take over my climbing. (well the good times were never going to last were they?)

second boulder didnt get past here

after the first time i noticed i had a painful finger i ignored it and pretended it was better. i carried on climbing and a few weeks later i went to the BRYCS final in london. it would be fair to say i did pretty badly. after messing up on the first boulder climb i went onto messing up the second. getting annoyed with myself. did ok on the first lead but got stuck on a big move. (i still have no idea what else i should have done) did badly on the 3rd boulder then went to do the hardest lead. by this point i was a bit of a nervous wreck. i remember sitting under the big overhanging wall at the westway feeling sick. my hands were shaking when i was tying in and and when the guy above me made a huge power sream and fell off i almost cried. it may not be a surprise therefore that i didnt do all that well on that climb either. by the time i did my last lead i was not really with it. all things considered i did ok on that one. by the time the comp had finished i knew 2 things. 1, i had really underperfomed and needed to work on lots of things especially long moves and the 2nd was that my fingers really hurt alot.

i reckoned that to fix the finger problem i was now developing all i had to do was give them a week off. this was easy enough to do as i was to go on a school trip to germany for a week which meant it was the perfect opportunity to rest. by the time i got back i told myself my fingers would be fine and things such as holding anything, opening doors and most importantly climbing would no longer cause considerable pain in most of my 8 digits (thumbs not included). how wrong i was.

i got back and soon was back at the wall i had the BBC coming up in a week and i was determined to do better than i had in the BRYCS final. i was at the wall warming up and getting quite annoyed that it hurt to hold anything. i was grimacing as i opened and closed my hands and really even climbing on the simplest jugs by this point REALLY hurt. so i carried on regardless. looking back i can see what damage i was doing to my fingers but at the time i didnt want to look weak in front of my friends and have them think i was making excuses for myself. if it hadn't have been for naomi (tilley) i could have done a lot more harm than i did. we were climbing on pockets on a roof and it hurt a lot. she asked what was wrong and when she finally got it out of me that my fingers hurt. she grabbed my wrist and dragged me over to ashleigh our coach. i was made to sit out and after a bit of discussion i was told i could only compete in the BBC if i taped my fingers. all of them.(i would like to make it clear here no one had any idea what i had done to my fingers at this point and the desition to climb was made with my parents and me from the best ideas we had)

just a little bit of finger tape...on every finger. (please excuse the questionable choice of t-shirt)

come BBC day and i had climbing tape and a piece of paper with instructions on how to tape fingers. with naomi's help i managed to tape up all my fingers. this caused a few stares and a few people asked if i should be climbing. i cheerfully responded that my coach had said it would be ok if i taped them. i warmed up and climbed. i found the tape to be quite restricting but managed ok. i had a good time chatting to people and got to know some of the other people there. (including kitty wallace at that point it would be fair to say i was a bit in awe of her although now we are good friends). having taped fingers i found was a bit annoying it tended to roll off when swinging on jugs under roofs this i could cope with but i had another problem. it turned out i was allergic to the tape i was using and so my fingers were getting very red and itchy. to counter this i found covering them in chalk and then flapping them as though i was trying to fly help a bit. so i did this rather alot. by the end of the climbing i was rather relieved to no longer have to wear that tape and enjoyed watching the boys and the final.

i was still unaware of quite what i had done to my body. it was only the next week when i got told i really shouldn't be climbing and that i should see a physio that i really got the fact i had hurt myself. the next weekend it was the BLCC in ratho (one of my favourite places in britain) but i couldnt compete i went anyway to watch. i hadn't realised quite how much i missed climbing untill about half way through the day when i decided that all i wanted to do was climb. i promptly burst into tears and cried alot. when i returned home i made an appointment to see a physio in sheffield. from him i learned the extent of what i had done to myself.i think it was 3 partial ruptured pulleys and 4 strained ligaments. so just a few fingers really. i had to take about 6 weeks off and ice bath them everyday.

im going to skip through rehab and stuff as it would take forever and move to 2 weeks before christmas that year. i was back on track and climbing well. we were going on holiday the next day and i was down at the wall for a training session. i was on a fingery climb and hadn't really warmed up properly (no prizes for guessing what happened next) i popped for a hold and found myself on the floor in a lot of pain. the tendon to my ring finger of my right hand had been pulled and was now swollen. the pain went from the tip of the finger to my elbow and i could hardly close my hand due to the pain. this had been the only finger unaffected by the injuries in the summer and i was gutted. this equalled 3 weeks off and more careful climbing.

if you look very closely you can see the hail!

after the 8th finger injury was sorted i thought i was invincible. there was no way i would be stupid enough to get injured again. it just wasn't going to happen. i climbed and trained and i got invited out to go sport climbing with sarah in may. i was through to the BRYCS final again and was looking forward to that but here was my first sport climbing trip and i was looking forward to it. we got to horse shoe quarry in the peak district and i got a lesson in safety from sarah's dad. she lead a climb and then i went up to second her. the weather that day wasnt great and pretty much as soon as i had got off the floor it stared to hail. great. i huddled in to the wall and waited for it to stop. luckily it was a brief shower and the sun came out and dried the wall after. i carried on with cold numb fingers (ok im an idiot) it was fingery but i carried on. got stuck on a ledge (my friends shouted at me to go left so i went as far right as i could and wondered why i couldn't find the hold they were on about) and generally spent a long time on fingery cold rock. it may not be a surprise therefore that when i got down 3 of my fingers were hurting (2 in my right hand and 1 on my left). this was not good news so i decided to rest for half an hour that would surely be enough to make the pain go away right?

more tape and a hard climb (see those nice fingery holds, well i spent quite i while locked off on them)

ok so it wasnt but i carried on anyway. when i got to training in the week i was told no climbing for 3 weeks the BRYCS final was in 4 so hopefully this would give me enough time to rest and recover. for the final i taped up (this time with tape i wasnt allergic to) i climbed quite well and came 16th but the injuries meant i wasnt quite giving my all. after the comp I carryed on climbing taped up. it wasnt untill i saw a physio again druing a free clinic at cliffhanger that i found out what i had done to them (this was about 2 months after the initial injury) it was the same one i had seen a year before and he even recognised me (i suppose you dont get many 14 year olds with 7 injured fingers) he told me i had partially ruptured 3 pulleys. this ended up being 10 weeks off. i used a different rehab method that time round and since then i have only had a few mild pulley strains which i have dealt with quickly.

the following summer i got tendonitis in my elbows. not quite sure how over training most likley. this resulted in 6 weeks off. i got back to climbing but it wasnt 100%. becuase i didn't really know why it hurt i carried on. i found that when the blood flow was good it hurt less therefore climbing helped so i kept at it. during a conditioning session with my coach they flared off again. i had done a few different exercises and when i came to repeat the pull ups i found that i just couldnt. my arms refused to pull and that hurt. a lot. i didn't take time off then (november 2011) but was a bit more gentle with my climbing. things steadily got better on the elbow front. they still hurt a bit but less and less each week i was climbing quite well and was looking forward to improving in the new year.

by january the pains were gone most of the time. still there a bit but nothing too bad. in february they went completely. i was pain free for the first time in months! that is until i met a chisel. now to make it clear i DID NOT stab my arm with the chisel as most people seem to think i must have. i was working in really nice hard wood.(im a tech student) making a finger joint. this involed aot of chiselling which really hurt my elbow. obviously i ignored this and carried on. (i really should have learned by now!) and when climbing soon after. my arms hurt but hey i was climbing its not like i had had any injuries before that should of taught me not to climb when things hurt so i carried on.

the day i found that i really shouldn't be climbing was the 13th of february 2012. i was in sheffield with my coach climbing in the foundry. i warmed up and found my right arm was hurting. having learned a few lessons i told katherine. she asked if i reckoned it would be ok. i reckoned it would (ok so i hadnt learned as much i i should have by this point) so got on a nice 5+ to warm up. the first few moves were ok but then my arm started to hurt. when it was straight it hurt intensely in the centre and when it was pulling my weight it hurt as well. i topped the route and decided that massaging it would do the trick. katherine asked if it was ok. i told her it hurt alot but reckoned i should be fine.(when will i ever learn?) i got back on the climb to repeat it.by the time i reached the 3rd clip i knew something was wrong. i dropped off annoyed and and in pain cursing my luck. i was injured again.

it took about and hour and a half to persuade me of that fact. i didnt want to listen. im going to talk more about how i react to injuries another time but lets just say not very well. this has by far been the worst injury i have had. it affects both my arms meaning that something like climbing is impossible and painful. sometimes there are intense pains in the centre of my elbow, other times the back of both my elbows hurt when i bend them. i cant keep them in the same position for any length of time without it hurting and i have problems gripping this especially when its cold as the backs of my arms "freeze up" and i cant open or close my hands without being in a lot of pain. know one really knows what this injury is. and all i know is that it hurts and that if i tried to climb i wouldnt have any use of my arms for the rest of the day. so for the past 10 months ive not been on a wall. climbing is still a key part of my life but right now its the waiting to climb that has taken over not the climbing itself.

so thats all of them. now i know it seems hard to believe that you can get 7 injured fingers all at once. but trust me you can. i have yet to met anyone else who has had quite so many at once but hey you got to be good at something right? ok maybe not getting injured. but now i know a lot more than i did back then and although im in the middle of my biggest and most injury im still a climber and nothing will change that about me.

i would just like to thank natalie berry for proof reading this :)