Maygan's Story

It felt more like a tearing, it was a horrible feeling, ‘cause every time I moved my leg, it’d feel like it would tear.

She was transitioning from basketball to soccer, um they practice outside in soccer, so it was probably about 30 degrees outside. When she came off the practice field, she felt really tight like something was strange.

And I kind of ignored it and pushed it away, and the next weekend I went to out of town and I played a few tournament games. And I literally, I couldn't move my legs.

Her injury was kind of one of those leftovers from a long season and so I showed her some extra stretches to see if that would help alleviate some of her discomfort, and when she saw me a few weeks later with it not being much better that is when I decided to refer her to Dr. Linker. 

The nice thing about Dr. Linker with him being a family physician is that he has that kind of background but he did the extra sports medicine fellowship. More often then not, we see are not going to be surgicals. 

I saw her with the essentially an overuse hip injury. This had not gotten better. Initially my concern, because of her age, she's an adolescent, my concern was that she may have a stress injury versus just an overuse muscle injury. We were able to quickly, you know get some test done had some x-rays done.

Dr. Linker came highly recommended as soon as she was injured. It was the first thing that was mentioned, like hey, you should take her to Dr. Linker.

One of the things I make boldly clear at our parent meeting every season is I will never refer to somebody that I don't refer my own kids to. 

Maygan had been working with our certified athletic trainer, Kathy Reed. We then progressed her to some more formal physical therapy, which in her case was extremely beneficial. 

Dr. Linker had prescribed that she received physical therapy. I have had ACL surgery years ago and received my therapy at the atrium medical center sports medicine and physical therapy so we both recommended that we just have the therapy here.  

So what we noticed when we were looking at underlying issues with Maygan was that her glutes were not performing at their best. And she was compensating her low back muscles, she was compensating with her thigh muscles, which, in my opinion led to the injury inner thigh muscles in the first place. That’s why she was here, for a groin sprain.  So, we kind of directed her treatment towards building up the areas she was having issues in to kind of correct the muscle imbalance and the movement issues that she had.  

Kathy is the go to person. If there is a pain anywhere, she's the go to person. And if you have another pain at all, she will say go here for help or or do this. She's very helpful.

Kathy has consistently been the first person athletes go to at the school. Parents will generally call Cathy before they will call anyone else.  

When I have an athlete go down on one accord, or field or wherever we may be and I get to help them up there and I get to make sure that they get to their right doctor and I get to get them over to Premier health for diagnostics in rehab and what not. I get to get them, I get to be the one that gets to watch them come back on the court for the first time. 

Quite frankly, due to Dr. Linker’s guidance, it was great, it caused her to set a bit, for club season.  

It took about a month, because club soccer is a lot different, it demands a lot more, so it took more recovery time.

Maygan is doing extremely well, she had complete recovery she was able to progress through her physical therapy, she was continuing to work with the athletic trainer at the high school. She had full recovery, Maygan went on to have a great season.  

I think the continuity of care that we were able to give Maygan is very important. And one of the best parts of my job is knowing that I'm part of a bigger team that set up to really take care of folks that need help through their whole process of recovery.