A Little About my Schooling, Sports, and Injuries

*If you read my first post you may already know a few of these things*

Hihi! My name is Elaine Morisset, I am 18 years old and I’m from Mission Viejo, California. Currently, I’m living in Lexington-Fayette, Kentucky, attending the University of Kentucky as a freshman. I lived in the same house in Mission Viejo (MV) for my entire life until I moved to college.

I’ve been going to some form of school since I was 6 months old because both of my parents worked full time. I went to a countless number of preschools but I remained at one called Marina View Preschool and Kindergarten for two years. After Kindergarten I went to three different elementary schools. For first grade I attended O’Neill Elementary, which closed down permanently after my first year. For second and third grade I went to Melinda Heights Elementary but I left due to abusive teachers. I then transferred to De Portola Elementary where I remained for fourth through sixth grade even though the teachers weren’t much better than previous ones we ran out of schools to go to. For middle school, I went to Rancho Santa Margarita Intermediate (RSM Intermediate) where I met my best friend Bri. After middle school, I went to Trabuco Hills High School for all four years.

In high school, I did multiple sports: track, wrestling, water polo, and martial arts. I’ve been doing martial arts for a large portion of my life but the others I picked up my freshman year when I was 14 years old. Unfortunately for me, my track coach wasn’t ideal in certain aspects. If you didn’t know, in track you have to weight lift to help build muscles. My coach, however, was not well informed when it came to an athlete’s bodily limits and pushed those of us he favored far beyond our limits. For example one of the lift exercises we were required to do was deadlift and once every other week we would be required to max out which is basically where you add more and more weight on until you can no longer complete a single rep. On max out days he would push me past my breaking point at an unhealthy level (I know coaches are meant to push you to an extent but not to the point you get injured). At the age of 14, with a body that is still early in its developmental stage, I was deadlifting 250lbs when I only weighed around 110lbs. The result of my coach constantly pushing me to lift more and more with all the exercises led to me needing two shoulder surgeries. From lifting so much at such a young age with no real guidance I stretched out and tore all of the ligaments in both of my shoulders to the point they could dislocate randomly throughout the day and if I wanted to I could dislocate them and pop them back in. 

With my shoulder injuries, I had to stop doing track, water polo, and wrestling but I stayed with martial arts because, in the beginning, we had no idea how severe the injury was. I have a high pain tolerance so I felt more of an ache than anything even though I should’ve been in a lot of pain. Before jumping right into surgery I tried doing physical therapy for almost two years before Doctors had me have an x-ray and MRI done which is what made us realize how useless P.T. was at this point. After the MRI I stopped martial arts as well and a few months later I had my first surgery on my right shoulder on July 12, 2018. Typically when you’re young or need multiple surgeries on certain parts of your body surgeons prefer to wait around a year before performing the next one just to make sure there are no complications. I ended up having my second surgery roughly 6 months later because I was healing well and my arm was functional enough that I could afford to do it. I had surgery on my left shoulder on December 20, 2018, needless to say, Christmas was interesting.

As of now, my shoulders are as healed as they will get. There are a few things that my shoulders won’t do that most other people can do but nothing that prevents me from living my everyday life. An example would be like when most people lay flat on their backs and stretch their arms over their heads their arms will rest flat on the floor, mine however can’t do that. I can only get my hands to touch the floor and even that brings discomfort. I’m also not allowed to lift heavy like I was before without putting myself at risk of needing another surgery but I can still lift. 

Deadlift example: https://youtu.be/-4qRntuXBSc

This is me now (I’m a natural blonde but I recently dyed my hair black):  

This is me just after getting home from my first surgery (7/12/2018): My surgery was initially scheduled for around 11 am but I ended up being able to go in at around 7:30 am. I was exhausted when I got there and it was a 2.5-hour procedure then after I woke up I had to wait an hour before I could go home. When I got home I was pretty cranky because my body hurt, I was tired, I was extremely uncomfortable because I had this bandage on my shoulder that was bigger than shoulder pads for football players and the sling I had to keep on (even to sleep) was the type with the pillow so that wasn’t pleasant. I was also extremely hungry because I wasn’t allowed to eat anything past 10 am the day before. 

This is what I looked like after my second surgery (12/20/18): This surgery was the one that hurt more even though the damage to the ligaments in my left shoulder was less severe. About a week and a half before I went in for this surgery I got my wisdom teeth pulled and they gave me anesthetics to make me sleep during the procedure so I feel like my body just wasn’t cooperating with being put under again so soon. After they gave me the anesthetics for my shoulder I stayed awake for a pretty long time except I couldn’t move much because my body felt heavy but I was awake enough to feel pain and know what was going on around me. If you’ve never had surgery before when you have surgery on certain parts of the body they give you nerve blocks to help prevent or manage pain. For my shoulder surgeries the nerve blocks, that get inserted with a thick 5-inch needle, go into the junction where your neck and shoulder meet. I was awake when they gave it to me for this surgery, I wasn’t awake for my first one, and I felt it and it hurt, bad. When the needle went in my entire body tensed and my nails ripped open the skin on my palms. I’ve always done my best to avoid showing when something hurts because generally it isn’t too bad but I reacted enough that the male nurse that was taking care of me noticed. He grabbed my hands and said, “squeeze my hands, you won’t hurt me,” and so I did, I squeezed and in that same moment he gasps and goes, “holy shit you’re gonna break my hand,” (sorry about the language) but he didn’t make me let go. After the woman doing the nerve block was done I let go of his hand and was wheeled to the operating room where I was still awake and unbelievably afraid that I wasn’t going to fall asleep. The surgeon asked me to scoot myself onto the table but my body was too heavy so I couldn’t but they moved me and I was awake on that table for only a few minutes before I passed out. When I woke up the nurse that let me hold his hand was chatting with my Mom and he had an ice pack. Before they noticed I was awake I was apologizing for hurting his hand which only made him laugh before showing me how bruised it was from me grabbing it.

This is what my shoulders looked like after I removed the bandages (top-right shoulder, bottom-left shoulder). I had to keep the bandages on for about 3 days after the surgeries and taking them off hurt, it felt like I was ripping my skin off. I actually managed to tear open the sutures on my left shoulder a couple days after taking off the bandages but it wasn’t my fault, Bug stepped on my shoulder on accident and her paw ripped then open. It didn’t hurt but it did look funky.

And this is what my surgery scars look like roughly two years later: The left scars were smaller and healed pretty well but the right ones were a little more intense but they’re also healing nicely. Both surgeries had two incisions on the front side of my shoulder and one on the back but the back ones are practically invisible now.