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 :)