Jarkko Lehmus Diary

What Really Happened In The Glasscage of Emotion

I occasionally write some totally obscure rubbish for various legal, professional or personal reasons, but mostly I write it just for the hell of it. For this once I feel that I owe you an apology, though. I haven't been particularly clear about what's been going on with my health. For my defense I can say that none of the GPs or consultants that I've seen have been too clued up either, but nevertheless: sorry for keeping you in the dark.

Now that you've got your apology, here's the explanation: I tore my Rectus Abdominis, the major slab of muscle under what ever else I'm carrying around my belly, last spring. The injury healed over the summer, but with the pressures of last autumn I ripped the living daylights out of the muscles again and kept working on it. The pain and lack of strength was getting worse and on top of that I was developing a lump in my groin. The doctors suspected a hernia and kept looking for one, but couldn't find it even in the MRI-scan. The next option I was offered was: "We can slice you open to have a looksie." At that point I was fairly eager to exhaust every other conceivable option. I finally got lucky enough to find a physio who actually put his paws on me, had a good grope and told me what he thought and proposed a laser and electro-magnetic treatment with plenty of rest and ice. The lump, possibly a lymph-gland aggravated by inflammation in the torn muscles, went down with icing and having some sort of progress did wonders to my state of mind. The treatment itself took a good while, but seemed to have worked and I'm slowly getting back to full battle-fitness. Nice one, Brian.

So there you have it. You'll probably never again read anything remotely as sober or informative on this blog. Now draw a big cross on the nearest wall in the most artful manner and blame Banksy for inspiring you to do it.

The Lakota indians have something called the vision quest, in their language "Hanblecheyapi" literally meaning "crying for a vision", as part of their coming of age rites. In a nutshell a young buck fasts his brains out and gets hopped up on some natural hallusinogens under the guidance of the tribe shaman and goes wandering into the wilderness looking for guidance from the Great Spirit. In a way I've been starved of my usual artistic outputs for all the mad energy running riot inside me and I've been wandering in the emotional wasteland of post-traumatic injury looking for guidance. I've waited for the NHS to help me, examined myself, read the anatomy books, prayed, meditated, exhausted my skills of logical deduction, drank my brains out, reduced to a shivering wreck on the gyrotonic machine and escaped the country to try to outrun my own impatient mind. While i quite like the occasional stab in the dark, this has been one vision quest with far too little guidance. I give full credit to the people who have helped me, but I am painfully aware that this situation is unsustainable if the Company wants to keep progressing into more touring and even more challenging repertoire.

At the moment the Company has a masseur and a gyrotonic instructor with two machines in her disposal, but neither has any training to deal with injuries. As I've understood, what we have now was brought in by Ashley, but there hasn't been much progress since. We aren't currently covered by private medical insurance and the trying to use the NHS is not clever in the long run. Let's look at my case: I have been out of action for four months, out of which two months was spent waiting for a diagnosis. If I would have pursued the NHS route, I, on top of my original injury, would also be nursing the scars of an exploratory surgery lengthening my recovery period considerably. The Company has been paying my wages and the physio treatment, but I've had to come up with all the solutions by myself and now that I'm finally getting back on my feet I'm jumping directly from relative immobility to the company class without any rehabilitative class work in between. So not much support, but plenty of hassle and stress. That creates an environment where us dancers put our health in line, because it's too stressful to report an treat an injury properly. It's a competitive field of work where the strongest survive, so we don't want to be perceived to be weak. We just want to dance.

The way I understand it is that the dancers are the major assets of the Company and it is in the Company's interests to take care of it's assets and make sure the dancers stay in as good a condition as possible, so the Company gets as much bang for it's buck. Cost-efficient management, and all that... At the moment there's a big element of risk involved with very little financial margin for error. It makes me think what happens when an injury takes such a long time to fix that the dancer becomes an unwelcome financial burden. How disposable are we?

I'm in the process of looking into different possibilities for injury rehabilitation and prevention. What this entails is trying to find healthcare professionals (GPs, chiropodists, various specialists for sports injuries, physios, personal trainers and practitioners from the "alternative" medicines ie. chiropractors, osteopaths and other wonderful creatures) who have the necessary diagnostic skills, would have an idea of, or would like to learn about, what we do and would be willing to start a dialog with the Company to help us create a strong support structure to minimize the injuries in the first place, and, once the inevitable injuries occur, ensure a fast diagnosis and treatment to make the whole process as clear, easy and supportive as possible. I have started the ball rolling within the Company, but the road is long and twisty. If you think you could help me, or know someone who could, please contact me on the email link under my picture or through the Company. I'm open for all suggestions, as per usual...

It's a long way yet to go. ©

On a brighter note having four months off has worked it's magic on the rest of my body. I haven't had this much time off for twelve years! While everything has been softening up all the old injuries have reared their ugly heads. It's been like one of those games where the moles poke their heads out the molehills and you're wielding a mallet. I've been able to change my weight placement much further forward and also the way I carry my ribcage resulting in more relaxed limbs and a better connection to the floor. Let's see how well I can keep it going when the tempo of the work picks up.

I've also had enough time to hang around my friends in other companies and I've come back to work with fresher ideas and a better perspective. Feeling the fluidity, attack and the joy of movement with the Bounce guys in Stockholm and Phoenix in Leeds, who are working on a rocker of a programme, and seeing the strength of the dancers in Northern Ballet, possibly partly due to the awkward choreography they have to endure, but surely the quality of their company class and the weight and core stability training has something to do with it, has been a refreshing experience. So all in all it hasn't been a bad four months and I've emerged from my vision quest changed and scarred, but hopefully also stronger.