How 27 Fractures From Falling Off My Horse Saved My Life

Spectators gasp as the red and white pole comes down, tangling up four dark legs as they search for the sand. Above flies a young equestrian, her love for her horse and self-preservation locked in a battle as she has only a split second to decide if she can save them both or only him. He stumbles as she bails, the only option is to let go, and the ground and darkness swallow them both. 

The horse untangles himself from the pole and runs off across the arena, where someone on the far side jumps in to grab him. Through the gate comes the medic, team, and trainer, to the lifeless body lying 20 feet from where it fell, its quiet moaning not audible to the spectators. Everyone watching, waiting, as the horse is attended to and removed from the ring, the jump crew resets the fence, breath catching each time someone near the rider stands and moves.

“Let me up.” 

“Stop. He’s fine.”

“Get off of me.”

“Take a breath for me.” 

“I can't. It hurts. My horse?”

“He’s okay.”

“But he…”

“He didn’t fall. He’s being looked at. What hurts?”

“Just…” fighting tooth and nail, unaware of the extent of her injuries, shock, and adrenaline finally win out over the reasonable and responsible arguments of the medic and trainer. Despite visible injuries and clear symptoms indicating internal injuries, the rider finds the strength to stand on her good leg and makes it out of the arena to check on her horse. Even the mountains seem to take a breath with the spectators as applause follows her. 

---

This was a fall I took in 2019 - a fall that, looking back now, is one of the many reasons I do go get checked out 98% of the time I come off a horse. I should have been backboarded and taken to a trauma center; I don’t say this to blame those involved, but rather because it’s the truth and a reminder to myself that the adrenaline and shock from a riding accident is often just as, if not more dangerous than the fall itself. I come with a complex medical history that has given me an extremely high pain tolerance and pain threshold, so when I add adrenaline and shock, I’m oblivious to injuries. It's a dangerous combination, and combined with the stubbornness of my early teen years, it was nearly fatal to me. 

This fall resulted in a skull fracture, a traumatic brain injury (TBI), and a broken humerus. I also broke 17 ribs and fractured my sternum in three places, along with other superficial injuries. It was a fall from rider error that resulted in massive internal damage, which, when adrenaline and shock wore off, almost killed me. 

Except…   

It also saved my life, because a few weeks later I was sitting and looking over a scan with my doctor, when something caught my eye. I brought it up to my doctor, and although it was dismissed at the time, every so often my brain would pop the thought back into my head. What was that? Could it explain something? Is that normal? 

---

Fast forward to 2021, for the past 5 years, I’d been in and out of the hospital countless times. My body was giving up. I hadn’t consumed any solid food in 6 months, and I was surviving on water and a peptide drink that I threw up 9 out of 10 times I tried to drink it. I was starving to death, unable to eat, unable to digest food, my body was eating itself, and it was “JUST ANXIETY.” Or so that’s what I was being told, time and time again. 

But then, that scan.

It was 2 am, I was in the emergency department, exhausted, having explained for the bazillionth time what was going on, to a blatantly confused doctor, and as they left the room. I lost hope. But when that door closed, what I didn’t see was the cogs in that doctor's head turning as they headed to the computer to read my file. To READ my file. The file with hundreds of pages and tests, and notes that contained that scan from 2019, and that weird thing that had been dismissed back then. A weird thing this doctor had seen before. 

“Have you been tested for MALS?”

“No… I don’t think so. Is that like short for something?”

“Yes, Medial Arcuate Ligament Syndrome.”

“No, not that I’m aware of.” 

“I’m going to send a referral out for you to someone in the state, but I’d also recommend that you reach out to this surgeon in Utah. He specializes in it.”

“I mean, okay. Why?”

“A bunch of your scans show the right kind of anatomy, and your symptoms would fit.” 

“Like which scan? Recent ones?”

“Looks to pop up in 2019, after some sort of accident with a chest injury, which is a very rare cause, but possible, so it's often overlooked.” I stare, “I did my thesis on this condition, on MALS.” I blink, inside my head, that voice that kept bringing me that thought is screaming, I TOLD YOU!!! IT WAS SOMETHING!! YOU WERE RIGHT!! 

---

Tears roll down my face as I take another bite. It doesn’t hurt. I’m eating and it doesn’t hurt. I ate earlier, and it didn’t hurt. I didn’t puke. I’m not nauseous. I’m not bloated and unattractive. I can’t see, but I can eat. Tears continue to roll down my face, but I couldn’t care; the salad could use the salt. 

My surgeon comes in, we talk about the surgery, and he gives us the plan for continued refeeding. While I’m allowed to eat, it will be months before food is safe because of how long I went without it. 

“But there is something else you need to know.” I tilt my head. “You already know the damage was extensive because of the lack of blood flow; you lost parts of your intestines, stomach, pancreas, and liver.” 

“Yeah,” I say, “and we are going to have to watch the parts that you left that were questionable, because I might need to have more surgeries down the road on them.” 

“Exactly, but I’ve also gone ahead and sent your case to a colleague of mine, MALS is a vascular compression, and based on what I could see, it looks like you have at least three others in your abdomen.” My eyes close heavily, his hand comes to rest on mine on the bed, and he squeezes mine till I look at him again. “I’m not an expert, okay? But Dr. Z is. Plus, we know what they are, we aren’t shooting in the dark anymore, we can treat these.” I nod. 

---

So I met Dr. Z, I had more surgeries, I fought for my life, and won. I also got back on that horse; I went back to that venue. I jumped that jump again, and I kept the horse between me and the ground and the pole where it was supposed to be, on the fence, not in between my horse's legs. Now is this isn’t to say that I wouldn’t have gotten the care I deserved without falling off my horse.

But…

That fall saved my life, because if that scan hadn’t been taken at that exact time, when the injury made the anatomy visible, and then been put into my file. 

Then the emergency room doctor who was willing to go the extra mile wouldn’t have seen it and been able to tell me about a condition that I’d never heard of, and help connect me with someone who could help because there were no specialists in the state I was living in. 

Then I wouldn’t have met that specialist and gotten surgery, and I would have starved to death or died of organ failure from malnutrition. 

Then he wouldn’t have found the others and streamlined my case to a colleague and gotten me out of the loop of the American Healthcare system that I had been stuck in for five years as I desperately searched for a doctor who would listen. A doctor who would believe me when I said I was nauseous constantly, that eating was painful, that I was throwing everything up, that I couldn’t exercise without passing out, I had chest pain, and had to sleep sitting up. A doctor who wouldn’t look at me as say,

“It sounds like you're anxious. I’m going to send you to…” 

So yeah, that fall saved my life because it wasn't just anxiety, and the first being to believe me was a horse. Is life just a series of events, and I got lucky? 

Maybe… 

But what if it's not? How would your life look different if you believed you could change your future?