Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Circus Injuries – Getting a Diagnosis via Social Media
ImaginAerial | Cirque Style Events, Aerial Acrobatic Performance: No lie. About once a week, I receive an email from a budding aerialist with a long list of symptoms (bent this, floppy that, pain when I twirl, etc.), and a request for my “thoughts”. Friends, that’s like asking a plumber for a prescription. In fact, a plumber may be a better bet! I am not a medical professional, and neither are the other 25,000 aerialists you’re asking for advice. So, what to do when you’ve got an ouchie that’s keeping you up nights?
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2 comments:
I can't even begin to imagine the amount of anxiety and stress that goes into dealing with an injury when your job involves putting a great amount of physical stress on your body. When you begin to feel pain, I can just see it being all over for you, mentally. While I don't partake in aerial arts myself, I think overall this post was a nod to taking care of your body in general whenever your day to day life, or your career, involves a great amount of physical activity. Especially when your career is in the aerial arts, where its not only about cardio or physical activity but its a constant amount of strength training. You're not working in reps when you're doing something like aerial arts, it's resistance training that is stressing your muscles consistently for a long period of time. There are no breaks.
I think this article made some excellent points about the dangers of relying too much on the community and self-diagnosis for injuries. In the anecdote provided in this article, it was very interesting how subjective the author's physical injury seemed to be when going to all these different doctors, especially since one doctor's conclusion was that the author would never climb again. It does make you wonder how accurate self-diagnosis is as opposed to professional medical diagnosis. I am of the opinion that self-diagnosis does have some value as a first step in the healing process, since you do know your own body better than anyone else does. While many "medical" websites provide a lot of misinformation, I believe that careful research can help you get an idea as to what exactly might be wrong and can help provide you with terminology to describe what you are feeling. After this first step, however, you should absolutely see a physician or a specialist to determine the exact problem. Even if your own diagnosis is incorrect, you can still gain valuable information from your doctor about how to tell the difference between diagnoses, so that you are more well-informed about your own body. However, I do agree that over-reliance on friends' diagnosis and self-diagnosis in lieu of going to a physician or a specialist can only set you up to do further damage to yourself.
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