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 :)