Being a dancer for 13 years has put a lot of toll and strain on my body. My mental and physical health have suffered greatly. Being a retired dancer now, I know how greatly these effects have been on my body. I wake up every day in pain. My bones grind back and forth, pop and crack. I used to be at the dance studio five nights a week from 4:30 until 9:30. These long nights I would mostly be in class, and I would have a thirty-minute break where I would try to eat dinner and do homework. But during this time, I would mostly eat, and my homework would go undone because I needed to fuel my body, so I didn’t pass out for my next class. Even though class would end at 9:30 I would then have to drive home, take a shower, and then try to finish my homework, but that always didn’t happen because I would be so tired.
I was on the competition team for a few years until I couldn’t handle my everyday life anymore. This is when my mental health was the worst. But no one knew and I was too scared to tell anyone about it. Even my best friends didn’t know. My grades in school were suffering and I couldn’t bring them up no matter how hard I tried. I wasn’t sure what the root cause was, whether it was not getting enough sleep, my mental health, or just not having time to complete assignments.
I have had so many problems ever since I quit dancing. I have gained two new doctors in the past 3 years for all my problems. My rheumatologist has said that dance is the main cause of the pain that I have in my joints. He has recommended that I get blood work done and check for proteins that are high when someone has a bone density problem. I have had multiple foot stress factures since I stopped dancing. The foot doctor told me that stopping dancing was the worst thing that I could have done to my body. Even though I am still very active every day stopping the pace that I was at when I was dancing has weakened my bones and the endurance of stress that it undergoes. I am also on a few medications that decrease my bone density and calcium levels, and I started those my senior year of dancing. Those same medications also decrease vitamin D and electrolytes.
Overall, it has put my body in a shock from stopping the stress that occurred every day. But I love dancing and would go back in a heartbeat no matter the consequences.
