Eight months ago I competed at the USA Weightlifting Junior National Championships. This was about a week after hearing a pop when I was coming out a max effort squat clean. A month later I was in a cast with the diagnosis of a slight stress fracture, a partially torn scapholunate ligament, as well as a ganglion cyst in my wrist. Six weeks later, in a splint, I was given a list of physical therapy exercises and a time frame of 6 weeks until I would be cleared to start lifting again. Fear kept me from putting too much weight on the barbell, but even though I was careful and did my exercises things weren't healing right. A couple MRI scans and X-ray's later they decided that an orthoscopy would determine the next step. This is basically where they take a tiny little camera and insert it near the sight of the injury, then they take a bunch of pictures to determine what exactly the surgeon needs to fix.
In my orthoscopy they found a couple of inflamed areas near the ligaments. After my surgeon took care of all that needed to be done, he put me in a splint. He warned me that if this doesn't work, healing my wrist may require a much larger operation (ligament reconstruction), but after that I would most likely never regain the wrist flexibility needed to perform the Olympic lifts at a high level; so basically this is my last chance to heal it right. I can look forward to a cast in the future and hopefully that will be it. Then maybe I can start picking up heavy stuff again.
In the meantime I am on a solid swim and squat program. The goal is to maintain strength and body weight without the use of my wrists at all. I am excited for what the future holds and I know that whatever happens, everything works out in the end.-Liz :)
