Grounded.

9:18 AM
By Beka Burke
20 Comments

On Saturday, trail buddy, Big G's mom, and I headed over to The Eventer's barn (remember her?) for a jump lesson. We've all been having fun jumping stuff at our barn, but sometimes it's great to have a pair of eyes on the ground and new sticks to play with.

Everyone loaded and trailered fine and we got to the barn in good time. The only sad thing about the three geldings we took was that it left Archie all by his lonesome with only the three mares next door to console him. He survived.

We did a little flat work warm up where TE asked about each horse and what we wanted to accomplish. Ox looks at fences, baby gelding needs form, and I can't remember what Big G needed. I'd previously told her that trail buddy wanted grids, so she had a crossrail, a bounce and a one stride with trot poles entering and a placing canter pole. We warmed up over everything as poles and she started adding in pieces, until everything was set back up.

It was when the one stride went from a cross rail to an oxer that I had serious problems. Serious, dirt-eating problems.

Ox was being a little timid over the fences, so I gave him a tap over the cross rail. And then a tap over the oxer, which he took very seriously. He overjumped that thing, cracked his back, and since I'm no better than the average monkey climbing his neck, I went flying. Okay, less flying, and more tumbling gracelessly to the ground.

Legitimately thought I fell off his other shoulder. #ouch #myasshurts #whoopsies #oxthehorse #bigorangebooty #ihatealloxers

A video posted by bekaburke (@bekaburke) on Sep 10, 2016 at 2:35pm PDT

I hopped back up because another horse was following us, put my helmet cam back on and started walking Ox in a big circle. I was not a happy camper. I was livid and hurt. I'd landed on my butt, but thankfully not my tail bone, and busted my knee. Eventually, I got back on Ox and we did an abbreviated version of the same line. TE was very good about breaking it down into a very simple line and slowly building the oxer back up. After a few times of getting over my miniature oxer, I cantered Ox over a cross rail and we called it a day.

TE gave me a giant ibuprofen and we all went to Mexican, where I tried to drink my ouches away. After lunch, we headed back to TE's farm, loaded up the boys and headed back to our barn. At this point, sitting in the back of the truck, my head started to throb. I couldn't get comfortable on my butt. I was already limping on my left knee.

As the night progressed, I wasn't able to walk. Every turn of my leg resulted in a sharp stabbing pain in the inside of my knee. I essentially took all of Sunday off, dosing myself with Ibuprofen, a compression bandage and a knee elevated above my head. I went to work like normal on Monday, with my little knee brace on and my leg elevated. And around noon, I noticed that my knee was swelling. Like a lot.

I love you, Severus Snape.

Of course I ventured out for Mexican.

Because he is the best husband ever, D got me in with a doctor he knows that afternoon. After a quick and painful physical exam, the doctor referred me to imaging to get an MRI. This was not a fun experience, but I still managed to fall asleep. The report that came back said that my knee was swollen (no shit), that I had a grade 2 partial tear of my MCL (the ligament on the inside of your knee), and the results of my ACL were inconclusive because I moved too much. Hello, arthritis of the spine making me twitchy af.

I went back on Tuesday and had another MRI, which confirmed that my ACL was intact. Thankfully.

Wednesday, I met with a knee specialist, who walked me through the six-week recovery for this thing. He said I have great muscle tone, which is probably why I didn't do more damage. Like a ligament tear isn't enough. I'm supposed to start doing some leg extensions and leg curls, as pain permits. He said I could start riding again, if I can do it with my giant leg brace. TBD. We're gonna test that this weekend, as soon as I find some appropriate footwear that compensates for the brace.