Closer and Closer

Just a quick one tonight.

The comp is getting closer and the pieces are falling into place.

The dress arrived today as expected and it fits much better! There is one small bit of excess fabric I have to fix by hand, but pretty much it is good to go.

My shoe is at the cobbler’s and will be ready tomorrow. I will double check it when I pick it up to make sure it will work.

I have massage therapy at the end of the day tomorrow and that will help to make sure my body is ready to go. Even after the rounds yesterday, my hip feels good and aches are to a minimum.

I saw the program for the comp today and its not a bad field of competition overall. I am completely uncontested only in my 5 open silver standard dances, but have 1-3 competitors in my other single dances. All of my multidances have a good field, except for the 10-dance which is only 2 of us.

I can feel my excitement rising!

Slowly I am checking things off as I get ready. Boss told me today he is going to look at our heat times and plan out when we will wait in the ballroom, leave, eat, etc. We both agreed that we would eat breakfast after the first dance as we have a 90-120 minute break before the rest of the singles each day. That will give us a little more time to sleep before preparing to head to the comp.

Two more sleeps to go!

A Solid Run-through

Finally!

The last week and a half have been about working to get the routines to the point where we can go through them all without stopping and almost mistake free.

Today we had a rounds practice where we mainly focused on standard and it went extremely well. Not perfect of course, but solid enough to alleviate some of the anxiety around the open routines.

It also helps that we received our heat lists and the most number of dances we have in a row is 5. We don’t always have a big break between, sometimes only 5 or 10 minutes, but it is enough time to recollect ourselves and reset for the next round.

I will also compete in 4 events with semi-finals and 2 with quarter finals. The two with quarter finals are both open scholarships, so I don’t really expect to make it to the semi in those, but I am optimistic to make the finals from the 4 semis because they are closed silver events.

That said, in the end it is all about doing my best – that’s all I can really control. I expect there to be some tough competition in many of the events, and much more seasoned competitors than myself.

We start fairly early both days, 730 on Friday and 8 am on Saturday, both to dance one random single dance I needed to qualify for the scholarships. After each we have about a 2 hour wait for our next group of dances. It means pretty early days to have my hair and make-up all together. We also have a good gap of about 3 hours between our last silver events and our open ones.

With the rounds practice behind me, I am slowly starting to feel myself getting excited for the competition. I have been checking off my ‘to do’ list and am counting the days.

I do have two small ‘hiccups’ to finish working out.

First, a month ago at our first rounds practice I snapped the post on the buckle of one of my standard competition shoes. I took it to the cobbler’s and they fixed it. Last weekend they worked well, but today when I went to put them on, the post was too short to hold the strap. I am not quite sure what caused that, but I have to go back to the cobbler’s tomorrow to ask them to replace it again with a longer post.

Second, I ran into some issues with my new standard dress (but my latin one works great!), in that the body suit was too loose and long which led it to shift as we moved. In addition, the floats were too long, especially on the left to the point where there was risk of stepping on them. I had to go over to the mainland on Thursday to meet the dressmaker so she could make the adjustments while I waited.

First, the ferry was booked full for cars (odd for a Thursday afternoon), so I had to walk on the ferry with my dress to make the timing, which was the only time available to get the dress fixed. I then had to take a taxi from the terminal to the studio. She was able to see the dress on me to figure out where the adjustments needed to be make and started to sew, but her needle hit a stone and broke shortly after. Therefore, she wasn’t able to finish the dress while I was there.

She finished it that night and sent it by UPS Friday morning. I should receive it tomorrow before my dance lesson, which should give us a chance to run some of the routines in the dress.

Needless to say, the next 3 days are going to by busy and bit non-stop, followed by flying to the competition and competing. The week after the competition will be a crazy one at work and then I fly out for 2 weeks of training in Germany. I won’t really get a break until the last week of May.

I really can’t wait to get on the floor again and see how I do.

Hopefully the comp will be as solid as today’s run-through.

2.5 weeks

That’s it until we leave for Emerald Ball!

I honestly can’t believe it is coming so close. It still seems like there is so much work to do, and we haven’t really done any run-throughs due to my injury.

So far so good though. The hip is behaving with only a little bit of tweaking here and there – mainly in paso. Thankfully, that is the dance I do the least overall at the comp so hopefully that will bode well.

Today we reviewed a couple of places in foxtrot and waltz to look at some of the line figures and make some small adjustments. Following that, we looked at some spots in the Paso where I have a habit of over-compensating to shape and break my left side.

We ran through it a couple times and on the very last run-through at the very end I got the smallest tweak going into the twists that end the routine. It was fleeting, but enough to put me on edge.

We finished with jive, which honestly is the routine that is concerning me the most. For some reason, I can’t seem to keep the routine in my head and I have yet to get through it without forgetting one major part or another. The biggest issue is I get into my own head getting worried I will miss a part coming up and then end up skipping over the previous section.

I need to mainly get out of my head in jive.

I also keep missing the first turn and ending up facing the wrong way by confusing it with a later turn. There is just a bunch of little pieces in jive that aren’t quite coming together leading me to panic some and then forget what I am doing.

We did try it at full speed today and up until the very end it went well. It then became really obvious that we haven’t really done the end of the routine at full speed as all of a sudden everything both of us were doing got behind. We really just need to go through the entire routine about 10 times without stopping to nail it down.

I have one more lesson this week, and then this weekend Boss and I will run through the routines in the other hall on our own (as most of the others at the practice will be competing at the Canadian Closed Comp in Calgary).

Monday I pick up my new dresses. I haven’t seen them since the last fitting so I am really curious to see what the final result will be – especially since slowing down on activity I have lost almost 10 lbs without trying. I am hoping it won’t have too much of an impact on the fit overall.

Next weekend we should have a full rounds practice with the other competitors so that should set us up nicely for the comp!

A busy 2 weeks ahead!

It looks good…

Today was almost hip pain free.

I started to feel a dull ache during the last 5 minutes of my lesson, with things feeling tight and tired about 20 minutes before that.

Compared to Monday, its like night and day.

Today in my lesson I didn’t hold much back. I had moments where I could feel myself being tentative because I was expecting what I was doing to cause pain and I was really surprised when it didn’t. Once I got through that first hurdle, doing it the next time was easier.

We even started with open jive and did 2 fairly good run-throughs- one slow and one more medium. We then switched to standard and ran through the silver routines, followed by the silver latin. We ended with the Quickstep and Foxtrot pieces we worked on at the end of Monday’s lesson.

Overall, a much more productive lesson than I have had in quite some time, but I am still being diligent and about icing and heating, physio and massage therapy. There is still 3.5 weeks until the comp and I don’t want to temp fate. I am also not going to be returning to the gym until after, just in case.

Small interesting fact: since I got injured and stopped going to the gym and reduced dance, I have actually lost more than 5 lbs out of the blue, putting me at the lowest I have been since chemo. Interesting that…

I have one more lesson this week on Friday and the weekend will be dance free as the rounds practice is cancelled due to a concert in the hall where it takes place. The weekend off will likely be good in the long run.

The plan is to review some of the latin styling on Friday and then do as much of a run-through as we can in the smaller hall on Monday to see how things feel. Hopefully my hip will continue to recover.

Looks like the competition is on! Words cannot express the relief I felt today throughout my lesson as I realized that I wasn’t getting pain like I was. I am feeling much more optimistic even though I am a little more sore tonight than I was after my lesson. I’ll do another round of ice and heat before bed and continue on with my routine.

Fingers still crossed.

A Glimmer…

Of hope. But so far only a glimmer.

I got the shot blindly on Friday and from there I spent the weekend sitting on my left side doing pretty much nothing. I noticed a little bit of an increase in range of motion, but not much else.

This morning there was a definite improvement. I could walk without pain on every step, I could do back breaks without pain and many of the things that were causing huge issues last week.

I still had some pain at the extremes of movements and it was up and down throughout the day. I am still icing alternating with heat regularly and taking ibuprofen.

I had the doctor’s blessing to try dancing again today, so I did, although nothing full out and fairly slow. I tried some of the steps that gave me definite grief last week (jive swivels being one for sure) and I wasn’t getting any pain.

We started the lesson going slowly through the jive and working on the styling. I would get a very minor ‘zing’ every now and then, but for the most part things were pretty steady. About halfway through my lesson I started to get some aching on my right side, but no pulling or zinging.

After the jive, we switched to quickstep to review the steps of the last line that we started reviewing last week. Switching seemed to be a good idea, although I was still getting some aching through my left side, especially on the heel turns.

We finished with the foxtrot to go over the final piece of the routine to clarify the loop back to the beginning.

I am sore and probably where I was the day this started 2 weeks ago. Needless to say, I didn’t stay to practice and as soon as I got home I put ice on it, followed by a hot epsom salt bath.

I will ice and alternate with heat more as the evening goes on. Hopefully the injection will keep working to counter some of the inflammation from my lesson. I have physio tomorrow and massage therapy again on Wednesday. The plan for tomorrow is a lot of rest. Hopefully physio can offer some stretches or exercises to help keep things getting better.

I still haven’t completely decided whether to compete or not. I want to give the injection longer to work and see how the effects last this week. The decision will be made after rounds practice on Sunday. If I can do it and things are ok, then I should be good.

But if I get to rounds practice and I can’t get through it, then it is time to cancel competing.

But at least for now there is a glimmer of hope.

A hope and a prayer

That is what I have right now.

The doctor wanted me to get an ultrasound guided injection, but unfortunately I won’t be able to get in until mid-June. At this point, she is going to try a blind injection tomorrow in the office.

It could work, it might not.

Doing it blindly, she might miss the bursa which won’t help reduce the inflammation and runs the risk of not being effective.

Unfortunately, based on the past week alone, if I am unable to get this hip pain managed soon there is no way I will be able to finish training to compete, let alone compete itself. Its less than 30 days until the competition and their policy is that they will only provide credit towards next year’s event and only with a doctor’s note for a cancellation.

So, competing is down to a hope and a prayer that the blind injection tomorrow has strong positive effects.

There is also still the possibility that its not bursitis at all, but a tendon injury in the area, but given the symptoms, bursitis is still the most likely culprit.

Other than the injection, my biggest ‘help’ is rest and ice – not great options and certainly not ones that feel very productive.

Yesterday, to rest my hip we looked gently at a small section of the quickstep followed by styling in latin. It was productive, but really limiting. We had already decided not to do the rounds practice this weekend, but with the injection tomorrow I have to cancel my lesson as I have to rest for 48 hours to give the shot time to work.

With a hope and a prayer, hopefully I will be back to being at least a little functional by Monday and can breathe a sigh of relief, but in all honesty my anxiety levels until then is going to remain pretty high.

At least I have the option of having my doctor try a blind injection, rather than being left with no option at all until June.

The other thing I have to try to do is not lay on my right side. As I have a habit of sleeping on that side, its a bit of a challenge but even after not doing so last night and a lot of ice there does seem to be a little bit of progress.

Here goes nothing…

Its Definitely the Hip

Bursitis is the likely culprit.

I saw physio yesterday and since I didn’t get much relief after my appointment last week he looked into my hip a bit more. After examining it and seeing how tender I am to touch he is leaning towards bursitis, with tendon issues being the back-up.

At least it isn’t my back, which is a relief since the back exercises I was doing weren’t having much effect.

The way forward is for me to get a cortizone injection tomorrow morning into my hip. From how I react to it, that will determine whether it is bursitis or bigger tendon issues. Basically, if the injection results in things getting better overall, it is bursitis. If the injection has minimal effect, its the tendons. If it is bursitis, the injection could potentially solve the issue or at least minimize it enough to settle it down.

Its hard to know what is causing the issue, but from what I have read once bursitis gets triggered (usually from an injury) it can be hard to settle down. This could be related to the strange pulling I experienced a few times doing standard and other movements back in February.

I am really trying to stay optimistic, but its difficult to do when I have had to really modify and baby my hip during my lesson. Last night we even ended early as working on the rumba I inadvertently leaned back too far into my hip and caused a huge twang that made it difficult for me to even walk after. Any time I rotate my hip causes pain and I am still experiencing a need to limp a bit today.

I am currently sitting with an ice pack on my hip (bursitis like cold, not heat) and really hoping that tomorrow brings some relief for me that allows me to get back to preparing for the competition. So many pieces are coming together so well in all the routines that we are even able to look back at some details again instead of focusing on full routines.

So my fingers are crossed (and toes too!) trying not to expect too much and being ready for bad news that the rest of my prep will be focused on resting and caring for the tendons as best I can.

Here goes nothing…