An Amazing Gymnast: Emily Bassett
Sports injuries are common amongst young athletes. While many are able to bounce back on their own, some injuries are so severe that they need rehabilitation to not only fix the problem, but lessen the chance of the injury becoming a chronic or recurring problem.
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| Emily's WTAE-TV vignette |
| Emily's photo gallery |
An Amazing Gymnast
Emily is a nine-year-old girl who injured her ankle during gymnastics. The injury brought not only a physical impairment but an emotional one as well. She lost confidence that she could continue with her gymnastics training. Her parents sought help from the expert staff at The Children's Institute.
Sports injury treatment at The Children's Institute looks at not only the injury, but the cause and how to treat the patient so that future injuries are less likely to occur. For Emily, that meant strengthening her ankle to get it back to pre-injury condition and then building her strength so she could return to her gymnastics without falling behind.
She came to her first therapy session in a cast boot and had limited weight bearing ability. Her sessions began with working on passive and active range of motion exercises (rotating and stretching her ankle joints and muscles), as well as modified weight bearing.
In addition to her outpatient therapy sessions, Emily was given a home exercise program that included range of motion and strength exercises.
Throughout Emily’s treatment, the therapists kept in mind that the rest of her gymnastics class was continuing their training. This meant that Emily had to rehabilitate her ankle, strengthen it to withstand future impact and train to keep up with her peers. The therapists communicated with her gymnastics coaches to help modify her sessions so that she could return to class as soon as possible without the threat of additional harm to her ankle.
By the end of her therapy, Emily learned strategies for how to deal with her injury and how to manipulate her body to avoid future injuries. Today, she is back in gymnastics and doing well. Her coach says she is more confident in her exercises and has shown an overall improvement thanks to the care she received at The Children’s Institute.
Watch Emily's WTAE-TV vignette on her recovering.
Emily's Photo Gallery
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