My name is Elizabeth Bran. I'm a senior here at UTD. I've been playing softball since I was six.

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Explain what you injured and how it happened.
 

I've had two knee injuries. So my first injury happened December of 2017. I was playing basketball and kind of came down on it wrong and tore my lateral meniscus. The second one I hurt in October of last year. So 2018 and I also hurt my same knee, my right knee, lateral meniscus as well as my medial meniscus. Yeah, so I was playing basketball. Yeah. So I ended up deciding to try out for the UTD basketball team, and I was practicing with them. Nothing really happened. I just kind of woke up the next morning, my knee is really swollen, thought I just reinjured and reaggravated the knee and it ended up being a little bit more than that. 

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What did you have to do in order to fully recover? Did you have to do surgery or rehab?

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The first time I hurt it like that, December 9, I went to the doctor and she said I tore my ACL. Got a second opinion from my doctor down in Houston. He said it was just a lateral meniscus. There was no tear or anything. So he did it, he went in, he just kind of cleaned it out, scoped it out. basically said you can start running right after surgeries. Me being a softball player and with season in the spring, I was trying to get back as fast as possible. Really didn't do too much rehab. Just kind of went back into it. Tried run as fast as possible walk as fast as possible. Yeah, the second time we thought it was just every aggravation of my knee. Did eight weeks of rehab, and then my trainer decided that I should go get an MRI. Got the MRI found out it was a lateral medial tear. Had to get surgery. My doctor didn't know if he was going to have to scope it or repair it. He said, "I'm gonna have to find out in there, it looks like it's just a scope for both. But I have to go out and look," I woke up from my surgery found out. He repaired it. The timelines a little bit different, for scope is just four to six weeks. A repair is about four to six months.  And so I just kind of rehabbed after that.

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Go into more detail about your reaction when you found out that you had to get it repaired.

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I was. So I was super super nervous because I found out that I was going to need surgery right before Thanksgiving break. And then I didn't get surgery until probably about two weeks after Thanksgiving break. So basically I had two to three weeks just to think about it not knowing if it was going to be repaired not knowing because I had it in December and again my seasons in the spring so it was, am I going to be able to play? Am I not gonna be able to play? Really really nervous the whole three weeks and the day before I was freaking out. I actually found out I got a repair when I woke up from anesthesia and I felt the brace on my knee because for scope they just wrap it up and you're good to go. And you can basically walk out of there, but with a repair you can't put any pressure on it or keep your legs straight, stuff like that. I broke down in tears is terrible. The nurse actually came in was like, "Oh my gosh, you're in pain. Do you want to go to your mom?" and I was like, "Yeah, please" my moms like "What's wrong?" And I was like, "I gotta repair." She's like, "how do you know?" because of my brace and stuff like that, so that's kind of how I found out I was super, super emotional. Honestly, like, worst day of my life by far I didn't really want to see anybody after, but everyone to come see me after surgery. When I got home and stuff I really didn't want to see anybody. I was really really embarrassed. really didn't want to talk to anybody, text anybody, talk to anybody on the phone, stuff like that. Didn't even want to see my dad, my dad came by and I just kind of was like, I don't want to see anybody so yeah, not not good.

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After that, initial shock, how would you assess how you felt after that shock wore off, were you still really sad the rest of the time if recovery?

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I was really upset. I had a doctor's appointment The day after. And he was trying to see how,  my knee bent or how far I could go, my strength in my quads, stuff like that. And the doctor actually was really impressed with how well my leg was doing right after surgery. And so he said, "oh, like, you'll probably be able to get back a lot sooner than I think". And so that really like kind of got my hopes up, I guess you could say. Then couple weeks later, a couple months later it was this is not going to come back as fast as I thought it would. Not as fast as he thought it would. I was really discouraged. I was on crutches for six weeks or eight weeks and the whole time I was super embarrassed. I want to do everything myself. I was kind of really just upset and again just really didn't want to talk to anybody. Really just really hurt by it all. Honestly, what hurt the worst was coming back after Christmas break starting softball season and me not being able to start softball season doing double the work and getting nothing out of it.

The whole time was just really really bad. I don't know I just kind of was like it's not going to get better from here it's this is the way it's going to be. I kind of didn't really see the light at the end of the tunnel. Yeah, just there's never really any good days. Walking, that was probably the best one when I could start walking without crutches or anything. That was probably the best day out of all until I got cleared.

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So explain what you have to do for rehab. How many days a week do you have to rehab, how many hours a day, what type of stuff did you have to do?

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So I basically did very minimal rehab when I couldn't walk on it when I couldn't put any pressure on it. And when I started to be able to pressure start walking without crutches and stuff. That's when my rehab really started to pick up. So I had surgery, mid December. So Christmas break I was in Houston, just kind of doing rehab, just very slightly bend, quad raises, lateral raises, very minimal stuff just because I couldn't do much. And it wasn't until I got back here like early January when we kind of start picking up the rehab. That's kind of when I started walking, doing more things. So I did rehab for about probably five, six days a week at our athletic training room for about two hours. And then three days a week I went over to UT Southwestern and did professional physical therapy. I probably did that for about an hour, three days a week. So I would probably do a rehab in the training room and then a another hour of rehab out of the fields. So lots of rehab.

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Where did you feel the most frustration?

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Especially for my first surgery. It was such a fast pace. I could run, walk, slide, whatever I wanted to do really early in the process, and then kind of just not being able to do that. Why can't I run? I feel like I can run, I know I can run, why can I run? No one really told me about the quad because when you have surgery, your quad kind of dies. And so building that quad backup, the risk of tearing your ACL, if your quad and hamstring are not equal, all that stuff was not explained to me the first time. So getting that news the second time, it wasn't good for me, I really didn't really understand. Not really understanding the all the other things like that was tough. Doing the same thing over and over again every day. Doing single leg squats or leg raises, just kind of doing balance stuff. The same thing over and over again, that was kind of really frustrating knowing that in my head, I could do more, but maybe not physically do more. When I was alone, that was also really bad. Just thinking about how I let my team down. They're really counting on me. I was going to be a starter and then all of a sudden not anymore. They had to reevaluate what they gonna do, I really felt like I let my team now and I really felt like they didn't even want me anymore. They kind of forgot about me especially when season was starting because they were all playing. They were all working out and lifting I was kind of left in the dust per se. So I kind of felt like they  forgot about me and that's when you kind of start thinking when you're by yourself.

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What's the biggest mental roadblock you encountered during your recovery? What did you feel cause the most frustration?

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My biggest mental roadblock was not being able to run. I'm a runner I love to run. I love distance running. I love sprinting. I love conditioning. And the fact that I couldn't do that, running as kind of my stress reliever. When I'm really stressed at school or really stressed with relationships or whatever, softball whatever it may be. I go run and the fact that I couldn't do that and kind of just had to sit and kind of think about all my feelings was probably the hardest part just all around. That was frustrating. I wasn't doing well in school that was also frustrating. Social wise, it was pretty good I had really good support staff but it was also very frustrating not being able to do things with them, like go to the Rockets game or go to Six Flags or do something even just go out and walk with them was just kind of all frustrating and I couldn't even go run that stuff off.

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What else did you try to do to blow off steam since you couldn't run?

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I think my alternative was trying to turn my frustration or focus into something better. Like pushing more weight in rehab, if my trainer would let me go up, move up board just trying to like work really hard. Just I've kind of just turned the efforts into like, the faster I get my quad back the faster I can run or the faster I can get back on the field. Just kind of doing one little step at a time. Oh if I do this today I can do this tomorrow than this tomorrow and also kind of just really focusing on school. I'm trying to put my effort in there my frustration there. It's like if I can do well in school, that's something I can do really well in. Yes, I'm not doing well in softball right now or Yes, I can't do this, but I'm doing well in school and my relationships and stuff like that.

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Who would you say was your support system?

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Probably like my athletic trainer for sure. She was my therapist part time. Not really my family just because they're not really here. I talked to my sister a lot about it, but again she wasn't here. So she couldn't help me too much. Obviously my boyfriend and my roommate were probably the two biggest ones that felt the daily struggles with me but also have kind of felt the highs of the daily celebrations too. If I was upset about something I knew I could talk to them about that and I did. Mostly friends and my athletic trainer were the biggest ones for me.

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Would you say those relationships improved after this injury? 

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I think so, I didn't really know my athletic trainer very well before and opening up to her talking about my feelings, that one on one relationship, this is how I feel and then she's like, I hear you and this is how I can fix it. And even now when I have "Oh no, I twisted my ankle"  she kind of knows better how to assist me. With my roommate and my boyfriend, they kind of saw the vulnerable side of me and so we kind of got closer through that and then even my roommate went through something really hard. And she knew that she could talk to me about it because I talked to her about it. So we're kind of closer in that way. 

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Was the journey to recovery harder than you initially expected? How mentally prepared were you?

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After my first surgery, I really didn't know what to expect. I was really, really distraught when I found out I supposedly tore my ACL and then think in and finding out that was just a meniscus was actually really surprising and really good news. And then my surgeon was actually really upbeat about it. He was like, you're good, you're fine. I do this all the time, you're going to be back in no time. And so that was actually really good. And I was actually really happy with that process because it really, I really didn't sit out one day of softball. It was three weeks in it out. I was ready to go. So that was actually really good. I really wasn't too distraught about it. I was like, it's an easy process, whatever. The second time was actually a lot harder. I didn't know what to prepare for. I thought it was actually going to just be the same surgery. I was going to go in and out is going to be good to go. Kind of the same as last surgery. found it really wasn't like that.

Yeah, the second surgery I was not prepared at all just not knowing what I was going to do until I woke up thinking it was going to be the same surgery. ended up not being prepared emotionally and wasn't prepared physically. I was actually prepared more physically than mentally just because with my athletic trainer, we did eight weeks of rehab before my actual surgery. So I was a lot stronger than I actually thought I was I didn't really know what I was doing with rehab before surgery.

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Going through two major injuries, how would you say your mindset changed?

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So my first surgery, I kind of went through the process very fast, and I didn't really do the rehab. I did rehab, but I didn't really do it well, I didn't really know why I was doing the rehab. Kind of just did it. It is what it is. I've hurt myself before It's fine. It's whatever. My knee hurt 24/7 after that every single day, all the way through season and my old trainer was like, is what it is, you're going to be fine. This is just the grind of the season. You just had knee surgery, you're fine. And then going into the fall, I was doing a lot. My knee felt a ton better. I worked really hard in the weight room to try to get my legs stronger, make them equal. They were never equal in the spring. So in the summer I really worked on that. They felt a ton better. They didn't hurt every day like it used to. And in October when I hurt it again It was just so frustrating being like, again? I just got over this. I just worked really hard. I'm improving so much in my strength, my speed, I'm actually getting back to normalcy. Almost a year later, ten months later, and then now kind of back to where it was kind of very big setback. I felt like I'm in the same exact spot as I was literally a year ago. That was super frustrating. I never had any knee injuries until I hurt it. And now I'm in one year, I'm having two surgeries. That was super frustrating. I was done. I was like, All right, I'm done softball. I'm done with sports. I'm just gonna not get surgery and just kind of be done. Because I was like, I don't want to go through the again What's stopping me from doing a third time? What's stopping from doing a fourth time? So I was really kind of debating on whether to  even get surgery if I should even play anymore.

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What motivated you to come back?

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My parents always say, is this going to affect you? If it's not gonna affect you in five years you shouldn't worry about it and I kind of thought five years down the road, what is my life looking like, what is it going to be? Am I going to regret this decision? And so I kind of told myself, I think I'm going to regret not playing four years and kind of finishing it out. I only have two years left. I'm going to miss it so much. I love the game. I love playing, I love being around the girls. So I spent my five seconds and it was like, yeah, I'm gonna regret this. So I kind of keep going. I also knew myself and I knew that I probably wouldn't have rehab as hard and as much as I would if I wasn't an athlete anymore, knowing that I didn't have anything to come back to. And so I'm hopefully going to be a veterinarian. So I'm going to have to be on my feet a lot, get down a lot, squat a lot, do a lot with my knee. And so knowing that, if I didn't rehab it fully and didn't get back to where I was before, then that would hurt me also down the line in five years.

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Now that you've overcome your injury, would you have changed anything in the process? If you could go back, Is there anything you regret from how you handled things?

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Yeah, there's a lot. I regret a lot of things. that I did. The first was being embarrassed I didn't do different experiences and go to different places because I was embarrassed. Like I didn't want to go out in public. My roommate had to drag me out in public just to get human interaction or just not knowing that people would understand because I didn't want to get in the way of anything. I didn't want to people to hold doors for me as I crutched by, I didn't want my roommate to be like, "Oh, are you okay?" When doing stuff or sitting at a table and not being able to bend my knees and stuff like that. I kind of really just don't want to be a hassle. I regret not going out and doing those things, knowing that people will be understanding that they're here to help that they want to help. They know I'm going through a difficult situation and they're here to help me. Kind of didn't take any help when they asked for it. That was another one of my biggest regrets is like, if they ask for the help, I know they are wanting to help, let them help. Letting them help me instead of me trying to do it myself. Also, another big regret that I have is not celebrating little little milestones. Being able to walk or being able to jump and then run and then play like just even add ing another weight on to my squats or doing weighted vest single leg squats or something like that. Just kind of the little little milestones, everyday celebrations I really didn't take. I was more focused on down the road, but when am I going to be able to run? When am I going to be able to play when am I going to get cleared? Instead of just kind of well I ran today! That's a that's a good sign instead of being like, why can't I run 15 minutes instead of one? 

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What is something positive that you think emerged from your experience?

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Yeah, I celebrate the daily celebrations, I think I appreciate being able to run again, being able to play I think I have a new appreciation for the sport. I had to sit out about a month, I missed about a third of the season with this injury. And so the hardest part was, the first game. They're all in uniform. They're all playing. They're all ready for game day. And I'm sitting here in sweats, not being able to kind of do anything. That was I didn't think it was gonna hit me that hard and then it did. So I think I have a new appreciation for the game because really, no one really understands how much you're gonna miss the game until you're not in it anymore. So honestly, I think that's like kind of a blessing because at the end of the day, we do end our careers, like at the end of this year, I'm going to be done. But I have the appreciation for it now towards like I can enjoy it a little bit more than someone who's never had that injury and never sat out and never understands what it's like to not be able to play a sport anymore.

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Does your injury affect your quality of life to this day? Does it bother you when you walk?

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A little bit, I think I rehabbed it for the most part, like pretty well to where it really doesn't affect me too much. If I'm standing too much, it'll start hurting me the next day. Sometimes it just kind of bugs me in the weight room. I can't maybe squat that day or run too much that day, like when I run, every time it starts hurting. But that's just kind of the grind of the knee. But I can't play basketball. I love playing basketball. Obviously not going to play basketball anymore. Just not playing basketball knowing that because I could hurt it again that's how I hurt it twice. Even though all my friends are playing basketball, they'll play pickup basketball. Knowing that I can't do that that kind of affects that, but doesn't affect too much of my daily life. I can still squat I've still bend my knee, it could be worse kind of thing. So just like minor things.

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What would be three mental health recovery tips you can give someone watching this video to help them cope with whatever they're going through.

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My first tip, mental tip is to talk about your feelings. I think at first, I was really hesitant on saying how frustrated I was, say how embarrassed I was. Just because I didn't want to be a hassle. I didn't want anybody to think of me any less. But I think talking about your feelings made me feel a lot better. I got stuff off my chest kind of made me a little bit happier just knowing that somebody could understand with me, emphasize me and stuff like that. Another tip is, what really helped me throughout my journey was talking to somebody, if you have that opportunity, that has a similar injury as you luckily I had a teammate who was kind of going through another injury as well. We were able to work out together, we were able to kind of do rehab together. We always tried to like compete with each other. We were able to talk about our feelings together. We were able to kind of go through our difficulties and different stuff like that together. So I think that's another really cool tip. The third tip is to celebrate the little celebrations. Whether it's walking, whether it's, hey, I was able to go to a grocery store today. I was able to drive. I was able to do just kind of the little things that you hadn't able to do before. And now you can because of your progress because of the hard work that you did put in. I think that's something that is really important to recovery as well as just kind of mental health is like, you did this, like yay for you go out, get some ice cream, go get a cookie, whatever. Whatever it is, that makes you happy kind of celebrating if you did well on a test. What would you do for that kind of just little celebrations. Throughout the process. The process is long. It's not fun, but just it makes it a little bit better when you kind of get happy with with the little celebrations.