Caroline Case Study On Sports Injury

In this article a twelve year old girl, Caroline, was dreaming to be a star athlete in high school and hoping to swim in college. That all turned around one winter morning when she was playing in a basketball game and fell to the floor screaming for help. Her leg was bent the opposite direction as if it was broke, when she made it to the hospital they diagnosed her with a dislocated patella. Caroline did not understand how it happened and why it had to happen to her, but she learned from many doctors that it was because of ligaments in her knee being too tight, other ligaments being too loose, and the fact that she had no groove in her knee for her patella to sit. She went through 6 weeks of physical therapy, she was hoping that after
these 6 weeks of therapy she would be back to playing sports in no time. Caroline was confused how so many things could be wrong but she kept going and eventually was playing sports again with a knee brace.
After a year has passed from Caroline's first knee injury she was back on the court playing in another basketball game and towards the end of the game she was again lying on the floor screaming. When she looked down at her legs it was not the knee in the brace ( left knee ), this time it was her right knee with it happening to both her knees her parents knew it was not a normal injury. It continued to happen many times, 5 times total, three times in one knee and twice in the other. Since her patella kept dislocating in both knees her more in her left, her doctor recommended she have surgery in her left knee, with a recovery time of 1 year. She would not be able to play sports like she use too so she became more involved with school and became a manager for her field hockey team.
Her Junior year she fell in the cafeteria, her dad was the P.E.
teacher so he was able to get to her and put her knee back in place, but she felt like something was still wrong because she had a sharp pain she has not had before. Her knee ended up swelling and the pain continued so she had an MRI done and found out that she tore her medial patellofemoral ligament, which connected her patella to her femur. She then had surgery in her right knee too with only the recovery time of 6 months. Now that she doesn't have sports in her life, She realized that she needed to rely on academics more, so keeping good grades is very important to her. That she planned to study occupational therapy in college. She found out that it's not easy to lose things that you love to do, like the love she had for sports. But then she found a love for new things that were within her capabilities. Although she can't do as much as she used to, she found other important things in life. Her friends and family keep her going every day. She learned that she should never take anything for granted because you never know when something will be taken away. She said it has been a great lesson because it lets her know she can really achieve anything if she put her mind to
it!
I believe Caroline went through a pretty hard time with losing all her sports and being scared for her life that her knees could continue to dislocate. This article connects to our class because we learned about patella dislocation and her story tells how one can go through the scares of patella dislocation. I have experienced injuring my ankle many times on the basketball court and softball diamond that I now have to wear a brace on my right ankle when I play.