So I want to apologize first to those of you who are followers of my GoFundMe page. I wanted to blog more frequently as I stated in my last post on GoFundMe but right after my last post I had a bad accident.
Early last week it was just another day here in Moscow at the Academy. My friend woke me up in the morning to go to breakfast. It took me awhile to get up but I finally did. We went to the cafeteria and I started to feel dizzy on the line for our food. I said I think I’m going to go back and so I started walking. The next thing I know is that I am on the floor. There is blood on my hands, I felt little parts of my teeth and I see tons of people screaming my name! The nurse picked me up and took to the isolator (it’s our school doctor’s office). I remember just crying because I kept spitting out my teeth and I didn’t know where the blood was coming from. I was so scared. Then the nurse told me that the blood was coming from the bottom of my chin which was sliced open and that I needed stitches, I also had broken teeth and my face swelled up. From the isolator I called my mom on Facetime. It was like 1am in NY. I just cried to her. I was so scared and I could tell she was too. She worked out the medical insurance stuff and two of my friends here took me to the American Medical Center in Moscow were I received stitches under my chin.
So even though we don’t know for sure and won’t know until I go back to NY and have a full exam done apparently we think I fainted because I haven’t been drinking enough water. I guess my body just shut down and I passed out. I went straight forward down and smashed my chin on the hard floor, splitting open my skin. I clenched down on my teeth at same time when I fell I ended up having to get stitches. I also damaged my teeth pretty badly. I will have to get dental work done when I am home in NY also. Thankfully the broken teeth are on the side of my mouth and not my front teeth. I couldn’t really eat until the swelling in my face went down and the pain from my teeth and jaw healed.
After my initial visit to the medical center I returned a few days later and the cleaned the wound and changed the dressing. Then this past Tuesday April 30th I returned to the medical center again and they removed my stitches. I also had a nice conversation with my doctor about where we are both from. He was from Peru. He did an excellent job as you can see below. The before and after pictures below show my chin with the stitches and then when the stitches were removed. The other pic is a pic I took today. Only 4 days later and it looks almost fully healed. The scaring is minimal to none! I am so relieved! It really healed well! Someone up there is definitely looking out for me 😉
I want to give some advice to all the young dancers who are will be heading off to their chosen summer intensives this summer. You will be working very hard in the studios this summer and dancing in the heat. Please make sure you drink plenty of water and eat fruit to maintain your blood sugar levels. You always hear people saying drink water to stay healthy and it is true. I would have never thought that this would happen to me. It can happen to anyone. I hope you will think about what happened to me, learn from it and always remember get a good night’s sleep, eat and drink plenty of water every day so you don’t end up getting hurt the way I did. We can only be our best if we feel our best and take care of our health.
Love, Nicole
Nicole Zadra 