Luck of the Irish...

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St. Patrick's Day was Saturday, so I know I'm a few days late in posting this.  But I DO have a few things going on that are keeping me busy:  cleaning the crap out of the house so that the realty photographer can come and take pictures tomorrow, trying to hide all of our clutter to make it appear as if we have a much larger house than we do; taking care of small children who require a modicum of attention; squeezing in work during the times my children are at school or sleeping; and add to this list the therapist-mandated 20 minutes of meditation twice a day.  Yeah, you heard that right.  20 MINUTES!  TWO TIMES A DAY!  It's been a challenge to get it in throughout my day, since it needs to be done before breakfast, and before dinner (but two hours after I've eaten).  So, there goes my free time....When's a girl supposed to obsess over Pinterest? 

But, I digress.  What was I talking about again?  Oh, right, St. Patty's Day.  The day where everyone's a little Irish.  I was never one to feel the need to booze up on this holiday, even in my younger years.  And now that we have kids, my day is spent cleaning up after celebrating the fact that leprechauns have visited our house, overturned furniture, and peed green urine in our toilet.  When we lived in NYC, I think perhaps I'd attempt to duck in to an Irish pub to down a pint with hundreds of drunken strangers, but the scene was never my style.

So, let me give you a piece of advice.  If you find yourself in New York City on St. Patrick's Day with a broken bone, if you can stand the pain, don't go in to the ER until the next morning.  I happen to know this from personal experience, and it sucked balls....

That's me, standing on the left...

Back in 2005, I was dancing in New York with a choreographer named Mollie.  Her company was very small, and she would work extremely collaboratively on a project for over a year, work that I felt extremely connected to and invested in.  The last major work I performed of her's was about 45 minutes long, a lot of dancing, but also a lot of spoken text and theatrical elements, performed in March of 2005 at Dance Theater Workshop.  In this particular piece for four women, Mollie was exploring some major medical issues that she had experienced as a young girl.  About 20 minutes in to the piece on the second night of our four night run, in a trio we called the "triage" section, I was feeling great.  Everything felt like it was flowing, I was completely present and enjoying performing, and the evening had gone well so far.  Then I put my foot down from a lift and heard a SNAP.  "Okay," I thought, "I don't think it's that bad, I can still put a little weight on it..." and then had to stand still for a couple of minutes.  Mentally I was trying to assess things in those seconds, and trying to keep my shit together to get on with the show.  "I can wiggle my toes, that's a good sign...I don't think I see any bruising, maybe it's just a tweaked tendon or something that will shake off in a minute or two..."

And then I had to walk.  Holy Moly, did that hurt in a way I wasn't expecting or had experienced before.  And yet, there was nothing I could do.  There was no one waiting in the wings to take my place, and I didn't leave the stage for the entire piece, save for one moment when I exited to cross backstage to the other side.  I had the piece of mind to stop off in the dressing room to shove an ungodly amount of ibuprofen in my mouth, then made it over to the other side of the wings.  One of the dancers looked at me and asked if I was okay, because I had gone completely white.  My answer?  "I think I just broke my foot..." and then threw myself back on stage.  One of the other sections toward the end had all four of us standing in a line, engrossed in over-dramatic crying like women at a wailing wall.  Except, my tears were completely real that night!  After the performance was over, I hobbled over to the side of the stage and just absolutely lost it.

After I calmed down and had a discussion with the choreographer, dancers, and my husband, it was decided that I should head over to the ER at St. Vincent's to get an idea of whether I could dance on it for the next two nights.  Bad idea, waaaay bad.  And now I know that if I ever have to go to the ER with a broken bone, I will roll in to that waiting room like a bat out of hell, screaming my lungs off and faking pain and tears.  By the time I had made it to the ER, I was calm and collected, so I had to wait five hours to be seen.  Did I mention it was St. Patrick's Day????  So the room was filled with all sorts of drunks, people having been the recipient of a fist to their face, homeless people peeing and pooping themselves, and me.  The first story we heard while sitting in that shithole was from a police officer walking up to a guy and saying, "Okay, your buddy is going to be alright, but he lost his big toe."  Big toe?  WTF did you have to be doing on St. Patrick's Day to lose your big toe?  It was surreal.

7.5 hours later, I left the ER with a cast all the way up to my knee and a diagnosis of a Dancer's Fracture - a broken 5th metatarsal - with no hope of dancing the rest of the run.  I was hoping they'd just tape a toe or two together and send me on my way, but this was not the case.  Thankfully, Mollie's partner was a phenomenal dancer, had been a witness to the choreographic process and was very familiar with the piece, so she agreed to step in and perform my role for me.

After taking a shower to rinse off the ER filth and a kitty cat nap, I met everyone at DTW that Friday morning and spent the entire day teaching Jean my part.  Sitting there in the audience that night, hopped up on pain killers, it was a very difficult experience watching Jean perform my part and seeing from the outside the piece I'd put so much heart and soul in to for so long.  At least I had many margaritas after the show to look forward to to soothe my wounds.  The recovery was a pain in the butt, and nothing is as much fun as hobbling around Manhattan in crutches.  To this day, St. Patrick's Day has always been a benchmark for getting past that experience.   I thank my kids for giving me something else to mark the occasion.  Little green men who bring the promise of gold in little pots is a much more exciting thing to celebrate.