Heal completely, Andrea. ((Hugs)). Lee, please don't beat yourself up over it. I would highly recommend some counseling for you over the deal (like they did as a team for the Canadians).

How sad that it had to happen at ANs. Get well soon Andrea!

How Awful. Get well soon, Joanne

__________________
[b]Freesk8er
<a href="http://avatars.yahoo.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://lookup.avatars.yahoo.com/ewimages?enc=TYGZua9FScEpjjzjr33HVJ9GFVdWBA--&size=large&type=png" width="150" height="235" border="0" alt="Yahoo! Avatars"></a>

I posted on the AN thread, but I'll add my thoughts here, too.

I hope you feel better soon, Andrea! Lee, I hope you're doing OK, too. Be proud of your silver medal in Gold Pairs and try to remember this AN with good thoughts (although I'm sure that's going to be really hard). You guys rock!

__________________
Terri C is a Bronze lady!
Gold Moves, here I come!

Healing vibes for a speedy recovery to Andrea, and well wishes to both Andrea and Lee. So sorry this happened!!

__________________
"Without a struggle, there can be no progress" ~ Frederick Douglass

So sorry to hear about the accident. I heard about it from Frank R. Sat. night. Speedy recovery And take it easy!!

My prayers are with you both. Get well soon and do what the doctors say!!

__________________
Adult Nationals, 2009 "The Time of My Life"

Please get better soon!!! (((((hugs!!!)))))

__________________
Skate@Delaware
Ah, show skating!!! I do it for the glitter!

Ditto from me!

__________________
This space has been put on hiatus for retuning....

My hopes for a speedy recovery and many more years of skating!
Becca

wishing you a speedy and (relatively) painless recovery!
but don't forget to make other people do things for you

__________________
Youtube Videos

Wow, I had no idea that this thread existed, I just sort of tripped over it this morning! So, you have to almost die first to become famous?!; hmmm, okay, I'm figuring it out! Thank you so much everyone for your well wishes, very very very much appreciated!

I'm copying what I posted on the Adult Pair Skating Chat, so that everyone knows what happened, here's our story:

Hi Everyone,

I'm here. All of you are so great, who could ask for better friends. Tara, Larry, Will Abel, and Craig Joeright saved my life. Tara held my left hand the whole time and Larry held my right hand the whole time and never left my side, so I am eternally grateful to these two people. I learned this morning that Will Abel held my legs still and that Craig Joeright put on his guards and ran into the hall and found a janitor with a walkie talkie to call over to 1980 to announce the accident and that's when Larry came running. I was on the ice too long, the ORDA EMS arrived way after Larry did. Had there been a monitor at this session with a walkie talkie things would have gone faster. The rest of the pair teams on the ice were absolutely amazing watching over me and throwing their hoodies down, so that I didn't freeze to death. I'm grateful to you all. Even the people who openly dislike me have come to my aid both before and after the incident, so I'm learning things at light speed and grateful to everyone. It was a good accident, because it is giving me a chance to start my life over again.

I think you will all agree that Lee has some of the best men's lift footwork in the business. It is not his fault and I don't blame him. We worked on the full back press for two years now and never once fell on this lift. As you know we had a major fall on the Platter lift in E. Sectionals. Another lift that we never fell on. I'm very worried that we had two major falls out of lifts in two very visible venues. I don't understand it, why it happened this way, but I think it is part of a master plan from upstairs. Let me say that ORDA and the USFSA failed me with 9 teams on NHL surfaces during both nights of practice. When I had the accident there were 8.5 teams on un-cut ice that was littered with toe jump gouges. Huge holes; Lee and I were the first to take the ice and I saw this one hole that was so deep that I could see the concrete surface. So, I skated over to the Zamboni door to get the ice bucket to start filling holes but the door was locked from the other side and there wasn't any Zamboni person in site. When I turned around all of the other teams had taken the ice. I have to say that there was a lot of pressure on all of us to get a lot done in 20 minutes in a very dangerous environment. Lee, by the way, is in far worse shape then I am...he's just about having a nervous breakdown, so please some people write to him. Everyone is writing to me, because I got hurt, but he's really scared, too.

Okay, here's a little side joke before I continue:

I'm so stoned and bored out of my mind that I started to be-jewel my body brace! I'm pretty dilarious and think that I'm Frieda Kahlo in her body cast. It's not too far fetched when you think about it, because Lee is a Diego Riviera type--you know "beauty and the beast" of course me being the beauty.

Anyway, it's not Lee's fault. Other things are Lee's fault, but not this one, because it takes two to create a lift and I went up into that lift with juissance, enthusiasm, and total joy. In other words, I went up willingly. I blame the conditions: too many teams, too much energy/white noise and too many ruts in the ice.

So, here's what happened...you know what...can I continue this tomorrow? The drugs just set in again and I have to sleep...okay, stay tuned and I'll tell you what happened tomorrow... (they should have a little druggie imodocon.)

Part II:

Goodmorning everyone. Had a really rough night last night, but I'm able to sit up with a lot of pillows and write now:

So here's what happened:

The 20 minute practice started and we all decided before hand, because there were so many teams and we were all anticipating the chaos that we would scream "LIFT" when setting up for a lift, and Judy's coach was in the coaching box helping us with this process, too, by calling "LIFT." So, the first team went put out a lift, then Lee and I went and put our a platter lift, then I think two more teams went out with lifts (by the way, all of the over heads were spectacular!) So, we started to set up for our back press lift and as we were doing cross-overs we screamed "LIFT" and we had a clearing. I have to say that in two years of practicing this particular lift we never had such a clean "up/mount" as we did that evening. It went up very easily, Lee was locked out, and it felt very solid, I was pushing down and he was pushing up through the lift, I remember even smiling, because it felt so good (Tara told me that I struck a beautiful position--sorry, but after what I've been through I think I'm entitled to a little braggers rights! ) So, anyway, here's what happened next; in less then a nano-second I thought to myself "boy, this lift feels really lite!" Well, I think I'd just experienced what is known as "hang time," because Lee was no longer under me and I crashed straigth down to the ice in a sitting position right onto my tail bone. Here's the graphic part and don't read on if you are given to feeling queezy...when I hit a could actually feel the bones in my spine crack. It went right from my tail bone and up my spine, which is why I let out this primordial scream. I never know I had that scream in me, but we all do, and it's designed to signal for serious help. I think I let that scream out about two or three times until I was sure I was surrounded by people, because I know I was broken deep within my body. I've been in car accidents before, have broken wrists and ankles and even spit my chin open on the ice from a camel spin, which required 20 stitches, but this was something that I've never experienced in my life. It was literally at the core of everything that existed (if you know what I mean.)

cont' on next post.

End of the graphic part: the next thing was all of my wonderful friends rallying around me. Lee never left my side for a second, except when he went to change out of his boots in order to ride in the ambulance with me, which was when Larry took over. As I mentioned, it took an unforgivably long time for the ORDA EMS to reach me and I was on the ice way too long. Larry told me that I went into shock after the fact, but he was really working hard with me to keep me from going into shock with breathing, refocusing and talking me through it. He is an excellent doctor. Tara was my spiritual guide--she just held on and gave me a lot of energy and comfort. I'm not going on SkatingForums at this time, because in the past I've found a lot of negativity on that site, and I don't need that right now, but someone told me that someone got on and said that the ice surface was okay. I really don't know why they would say that, because it was really awful and ruts were very visible and numerous.

Okay, so when things finally came together...oh, this was weird, when they put the board under me and went to lift me onto the gerny (sp?) I experienced the fall all over, again and really became very dizzy. I was first rushed to Lake Placid Hospital where they took X-rays and found that I had a compression fracture on my L1 Vertabrae. After that they packed me back up and rushed me to Saranac Hospital for a Cat Scan. I think Lee took a taxi back to the hotel and got my car and then drove right out to Sarana Hospital. The cat scan revealed that I had also fractured my sacrum, too, which is a little bit above the tail bone. So, six (6) weeks in my beautiful be-jeweled upper-body brace, bed rest, not a lot of moving around during this time (only in the house.) They said I can take little walks as the pain begins to subside. This is the strangest thing going from being incredibly active: I skated 4 days a week and was in the gym lifting two other days per week--to nothing and being totally sedentary. This is really hard for me, but here's another silver linning thing; I lost 4 lbs this week doing nothing! I've lost a total of 17.5 lbs, since E. Sectionals...Good for me (in Russian accent.)

After the body brace comes off then 6 more weeks of Physical Therapy, which I'm really looking forward to; I've had physical therapy in the past when I blew out my shoulder on the dear DS, and I thought it was really good stuff, so I'm looking forward to that. This morning Lee and I agreed not to think about skating right now and make any decisions about what we are going to do. He will continue practicing his Novice Moves this summer, while I am healing, and he'll try to test and pass them this summer before the new changes kick in. Before the accident, I was working with Philip Duhlebon on Novice Moves and I learned a ton of stuff from him that I'm hoping wasn't for nothing. I'm a little nervous now, because Lee was already a year ahead of me with Novice Moves and now I'll be set back even that much more. I'm much happier when we can do things toghther and remain contemporaries with our skill levels--oh, well.

Anyway, Ellen and Les are being very good friends to us and they are trying to put Oleg Vasilliev in touch with Lee to help him and give him some advice, since Oleg witnessed the recovery process for both Tatiana and Maxim when they had their accident. Melissa Gregory and Dennis Petrokov live close to us and I was thinking about asking Precilla Hill if we can have a moment with the, too, it might help. The thing with the elites though is that A) they are young B) have very concrete reasons to recover and get back in the game. I think we are going to have a very hard time figuring out what to do with all of this, which is pretty much an ever-present Adult Skating question: Why are we doing this? Especially, when a serious accident like this occurs, this question, becomes even that more pressing.

Okay, we'll figure it out in time.

Thank you, again, everyone for all of your well wishes and support. It is so important to us.

I'll be sending out an Adult Pairs Communication as soon as Lee brings my Mac up to me (I'm on a laptop now and can't do the website from this computer, because the software I use is on the Mac.) Anyway, the website is one thing that I'll be able to work on this summer. So, I'll be in touch real soon.

With love,
Lovepairs

Oh, I just want to make a little footnote before I forget: I was told that after they took me away that Zamboni men came out and patched up the ruts. I also heard that there was NOT an ice cut planned in the scheudle before the Championship Event, but when they heard of the accident, they threw in an ice cut. I was also told by another skater that 1932 was empty from 6:00pm until the pairs practice, and that they allowed the pairs to stay on the ice longer after the accident, because nothing was scheduled afterwards. I was also told that while 8.5 pair teams were on 1932 that USA was empty. I don't know if any of this is true, but this is what I've been told. If it is all true, there was no need for this many pair teams to be on an NHL surface simultaneously, which is a very dangerous situation and a recipie for disaster, which is what transpired

Ohhh! Lovepairs, what you've been through. It brought tears to my eyes when you were describing the unbelievable pain you went through with your fall. I have never fallen as you have but have suffered many back injuries, hence my name 'herniated'. I have fractured my tail bone through skating but not the vertebrae themselves. And my fracture was only falling from my own height.

It was terrible how long it took for help to get to you. I think I would have thrown up from fear. You seem like a very strong, brave woman. And I know what it's like being totally sedentary too when one is not used to this. It can be maddening.

Whatever decisions both you and Lee make regarding your skating will come in time and it will be the right one for you both.

I have seen you both before at 2006 AN and Easterns this year but never met you. Next time I see you I will say hello and make it my business to watch you skate.

Regarding healing. The end of last year I tried Active Release Technique, some physical therapists are certified in it. I swear by it now. I was at the point where I questioned if I could go on skating (because of my back) so I tried it at the urging of a skater/coach friend and I'll never look back. Just a friendly suggestion.

Thoughts and prayers are with you and your partner.

I have never heard of that... I have a wonky back as well with a little arthritis and am willing to try anything.

__________________
Keeping School Figures Alive!!

Thank you so much Herniated. I will certainly mention the "Active Release Technique" to my Physical Therapist and see what it is all about. In about 6 weeks, I'll start the therapy.

Right now my back feels like jello and I can't stand up without the brace on, but I'm certain I'll have something to work with by the end of the summer.

Thank you for your words--they really help!

Just get back as soon as you can!

We miss ya!

__________________
Keeping School Figures Alive!!

*Hugs* Andrea. I do hope you heal fast. Such a horrid thing to happen - it's why I hate watching pairs and tend to avoid it, or watch with my eyes shut and get it on the repeat! Ice dance is quite bad enough - and we haven't put a lift in our free dance this year!

__________________
Mrs Redboots
~~~~~~~~
I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

I was also mad when I heard that the USA rink was left empty for no reason. It really scared me when Dr. Larry told me what happened. Thanks for updating us with your recovery news!

__________________
This space has been put on hiatus for retuning....

Ouchies, your description seriously just gave me sympathy pains. I do hope you are not in terrible pain anymore and I wish you lots of luck on your road to recovery.

Figureskates - google activereleasetechnique and it will give you the official website with listings of practitioners in your area. It's kind of a combination of deep tissue massage and your own movement that the practioner tells you how to move while he/she is manipulating your soft tissue.

It releases scar tissue and adhesions. Annndddd, it is not a three x a week thing either.

Glad you're okay, glad Larry was there, and also glad Les/Ellen can see if Oleg has any advice. He certainly would be a terrific resource, under the circumstances.

__________________
Listen to my Figure Skating Podcast!

Rogue Element, Inc

I'm really glad you're going to be okay. And let Lee know that we're thinking of him too!

Black sheep - I was sitting next to you when Dr Larry told us. I was impressed that you didn't curse up a storm about it like I did.

Unfortunately, ORDA didn't do the greatest job with their planning and scheduling for this ANs versus other ones. AND it took something this tragic for them to learn a valuable lesson. I hope whoever is the next LOC takes note of this and plans better for practices/W/U. GGR girls, I am sure you took note of this in case you guys win the bid (FX).

Hi Everyone,

Thank you Skaternum, CoSkater64, Manlywoman, and everyone else for your well wishes; Lee and I are very appreciative and using your kindness for healing purposes. Timmy David, a special thank you for starting this thread, I watched you skate on IceNetwork! Excellent! You skated beautifully!!!

I was infomed this morning by an official that ORDA was responsible for practice ice, upon which there were numorous pair teams scheduled and way more then would lend itself to safe conditions, but that the Referee was ultimately responsible for signing off on the "official 20 minute practice ice," upon which the accident occurred. Since it was known that 9 pair teams were in the Championship Event, it was known ahead of time that 9 pair teams had to have an "official 20 minute practice ice" close to our event.

What is unbelievable is that Rink 1932 was empty from 6:00pm-6:30pm (so I was told by another skater) and the Champ Pair Practice was scheduled from 6:30pm for 20 minutes. Then after my accident the pair teams were allowed to stay on longer, because nothing was scheduled afterwards. What makes matters worse was that I was also informed that Rink USA was empty while 9 pair teams were crammed into the "official practice ice" on 1932.

I have been encouraged to contact the Referree about this.

Next, remember we all received a letter that there will be NO EARLY STARTS for any competition? That letter came from the Referree, too. However, the Adult Silver Pairs was moved up early, which comprimised the skate of one of my friend's team. So, here's the thing: the Ref is making these rules, then breaking them, and then we were all encouraged in the article in the March Issue of Skating Magazine, not to contact the Referee???