Oh Land

Nanna Øland Fabricius, a native of Denmark, was forced to leave the Royal Swedish Ballet School after a back injury ended a promising start to her career. The daughter of an opera singer and a composer, she channeled her intense understanding of music and the pain of giving up ballet into singing, and produced her own debut album, entitled 'Fauna', under the name 'Oh Land'. 

The album has a beautiful, light, ecletic, electro-pop sound, and Nanna has a stunning, delicate voice. She now lives in Williamsburg, New York, and her second self-titled album is scheduled to be released in early 2011. As any dancer who has struggled with a serious injury knows, stopping because your body is telling you to is so difficult and emotionally painful when your heart tells you you can't give up yet. Oh Land, then, has lots to write about. 

I remember struggling through my first slew of knee dislocations when I was younger.

One day, sitting in the emergency waiting room at the hospital, I wrote in a notebook:

Once striving for perfection,

I am faulty.

Once yearning to be beautiful,

I am ugly.

I am broken.

Patella Alta

Dancers and non-dancers alike know that ballet is extremely stressful on the body. Perfect turn-out is extremely unnatural and more often than not, we cheat our turn-out, causing long-term damage on knees, hips and the lower back. Ask any dancer to tell you about an injury they are coping with, and they will smile coyly and ask, "Which one?"

In my case, I was born with a condition called patella alta, which consists of high-riding knee caps. Compare the x-rays of a patient with patella alta and a normal knee:

 Above: patella alta

Normal knee

Anyway, when the knee caps sit too high, they aren't positioned correctly in the trochlear groove, which keeps them in place. Thus, people with patella alta usually dislocate their knees frequently. My knees dislocate laterally- to the outside of the leg- and they dislocate a lot. My caps don't sit as high as those in the top x-ray image, so as a result, they stick out a lot and look really knobbly.

My patella alta actually gives me pretty hyperextension (not a crazy amount or anything), so as a young dancer, I always thought I had the ideal legs for ballet. Then, when I started training every day as a teenager, the dislocations started. Ideal legs?? Think again, girl. 

Doctors and physiotherapists told me the same thing: I needed to strengthen my vastis medialis muscles (the muscles on the medial (inside) side of the knee). So I did, for several years, but nothing changed. One day, I dislocated my knee in my sleep and woke up to a knee cap out of place and swelling that looked like a balloon was stuck inside my leg. It wasn't until then that I was referred to an internationally renowned knee surgeon and sports injury specialist in Toronto, Dr. John Cameron, also known as 'the knee cap guy.' The first thing he said when he saw my x-rays was, "Those are some high knee caps. I don't even need to examine you." 

I am having surgery on both of my legs in about a year, 4 months apart. Patella alta is corrected by reattaching the patellar tendon (the tendon connecting the patella and shin bone) lower on the tibia (shin bone) with metal pins. Only one of Dr. Cameron's patients has ever dislocated a knee after this surgery, and that was because she had a very shallow trochlear groove, so her patella was still unstable. I am feeling very positive, but that will probably change as the first surgery date comes around!