When Laura Ball’s doctor told her that she broke her back she didn’t ask him if she was going to be ok. She didn’t ask him for pain killers to numb the shooting pains moving up and down her spine. She didn’t ask him, “why me?”
She asked him if she was going to be able to dance.
He told her no.
The gold-sequined hat that has sat on her head for the past two years proved him wrong.
Senior Laura Ball has a fractured spine. Simply sitting for too long causes her immense pain, yet she spent the last two years as an Eaglette Lieutenant dancing almost every day.
Life without dance was not an option for Laura.
But slowly, her doctor’s words are becoming true. She is preparing for back surgery that will make dancing impossible for fear of paralysis.
She danced for the last time at Eaglette Revue on April 2, and at the end of the show, when she hung up her hat in a time-honored Eaglette tradition for seniors, she also hung up her back brace.
“It was really touching at the last night of Revue when we all knew that was the last time she could ever dance,” Eaglette director Lizbeth Thompson said.
The last step she performed at the Saturday night performance was the same one that broke her back – the jump split.
“The summer of my sophomore year we were doing jump splits in the dance room and I just remember it hurting it really, really bad,” Laura said. “I didn’t know if I’d be able to get up or not because of how much it hurt. It was scary because I was having numbness and tingling and a lot of sharp, shooting pain.”
When she finally stood up, she blamed the pain on a previous injury – a minute tear in her ACL. It wasn’t until receiving a CAT scan that she found out it was much worse.
Multiple fractures at vertebrae L5 and S1. A herniated disk. Spondylosis.
And a grim prognosis.
“The doctor said I couldn’t dance anymore, that I couldn’t even try, because I’d just make it worse,” Laura said. “He just said no. I was just like ‘well I’ll show you.’ I pushed myself harder then I should have. I was practicing more, stretching more and working out more.”
Though she eventually put up a strong front, hearing that her doctor thought she would never dance again was heartbreaking.
“I sat there for a week and a half and just cried all the time because it was like the doctors looked at me and said there is no hope,” Laura said. “I came to terms with it eventually after showing them that there was hope. I told them I was going to finish my senior year dancing – I had to do it for myself.”
Her resolute choice was not without consequences.
“Every time I move my lower back tenses up really bad,” Laura said. “Sometimes it’s so bad that I can’t move. Sometimes it’s a dull pain, but that’s only when I’ve had pain medication or have a patch or my brace on. Usually it’s just a sharp, shooting pain that doesn’t go away.”
The only escape from the pain is a surgery that will replace the disk between vertebrae L5 and S1 with an artificial disk and place metals screws in her spine to attempt to fuse the bones, which have broken into six pieces, back into one piece.
But while the surgery will put her spine back together, it will tear her life apart.
“I’ve been dancing since I was three,” Laura said. “It’s the only life I’ve ever known. It’s like taking someone out of their home and saying you can’t have this anymore. I’m saying goodbye to a really big part of me.”
Since the injury, dancing hasn’t been the same.
“There are a lot of tricks that I used to be able to do that I can’t do anymore,” Laura said. “There are a lot of jumps that I like doing where I have to arch my back that are really painful now. I can do something full out once, but after that, don’t ask me to do it again.”
Thompson is proud of Laura’s dedication, even though she wasn’t always able to perform with the team.
“I was very proud of Laura as she persevered through her two years as Lieutenant, watching her teammates dance and perform when she wasn’t able to do that every day in practice,” Thompson said. “She was a cheerleader for her teammates.”
Telling Thompson and the rest of the Eaglettes, who have been like a family to Laura, was extremely hard.
She stood alone in front of the team, a spot usually reserved for girls delivering the news that they are quitting, and told her teammates and friends what had happened.
“Look, I’m not quitting, but here is why I won’t be dancing everything full out anymore.”
Tears and questions followed her announcement, but their support remained strong throughout Laura’s journey. She continues to provide encouragement for her teammates.
“It has been so inspiring to see someone push through every single day of practice,” sophomore Eaglette Jessica Mitchell said. “She’s a motivation to try our hardest every day because it can always be worse.”
No one has given Laura as much support as her parents.
“My dad has always done a lot for me, I just haven’t really noticed,” Laura said. “He’s very protective of me and my back. If there is something that hurts, he says don’t do it. If I say I have to, he says no. He always stands up for me. And my mom has just been there every single step of the way. My parents have just been there for me 24/7.”
They also help Laura through the misunderstandings people have about her injury.
“Laura is a child that has an injury that is not visible to everyone’s eye, therefore not many people understand her back injury and they give her a lot of grief for it. As a family we’ve been very protective of her,” mother Barbara Ball said. “We’re so proud of her in that she still puts 110 percent into what she loves and she didn’t just give up.”
Even they can’t shield Laura from the next part of her journey.
Unless a new group of surgeons, who the Balls will meet with over the summer, declare differently, Laura’s surgery will be followed by two months in a wheelchair, then a walker, and a year’s worth of physical therapy.
Not to mention other lifelong ramifications.
“I’ll never get to go skiing which is something I’ve always wanted to do which is kind of a slap in the face,” Laura said. “And, of course, I won’t be able to dance anymore. No high impact stuff at all.”
But other unexpected effects of the injury have been positive.
“This brought me a lot closer to God because I gave up a relationship with God for dance when I was doing it really seriously,” Laura said. “When I first broke my back, I turned against God completely saying ‘How could you do this to me? Why would you do this to me if you loved me? If you’re a loving, caring God then why would you do this?’ And then while I was going through all this with my back, my dad was diagnosed with cancer. Afterwards, I was able to go back to God and say ‘ok, I just have to trust you and trust that you know what you’re doing. I may not always agree with you, but I have to trust you.’”
She will have to maintain that trust as she enters the next stage of her life, unsure of what it will bring and what will be its central focus.
“Everyone’s always like ‘oh, you’re Laura Ball the dancer,’’ Laura said. “It’ll be weird not being known as that anymore, but I’ll always be Laura Ball the Dancer in my head. I’m still trying to figure out who I’m going to be next, but that’s what college is for.”
She will take with her the lessons learned in dance.
“I have gotten a lot of really good life experiences from dance, like knowing how far you can push yourself,” Laura said.