A Day in the Life of a National Team Athletic Trainer.
9 min Read
A Day in the Life of a National Team Athletic Trainer
Setting the Stage
Since my past two months have been consumed with working in Anaheim with both Men’s and Women’s Indoor Volleyball National teams in various capacities. I thought I would give you a little insight to what that actually looks like.
I’m currently writing this at 30000 feet to give a bit of an idea. I am on my way back from Leon Mexico where I was in support of the Men’s PanAm Cup team who competed in the week long PanAm Cup event.
Pregame Prep
Normally something like this is written as a morning to evening or a 24 hour period. This trip provided a little more activity than is usually but this also shows what can happen and how situations are handled.
I finished getting all the guys who needed various things taped, ankles, fingers, toes before w started our team warm up. Then I joined the team outside to our designated warm up area and ran them through a full body stretch and dynamic warm up before heading back inside the gym for them to continue their game warm ups.
While they go through passing warm ups and hitting drills I set up my med kit at the far end of the bench close to where the non-starting players are during the match.
Incident #1 Ankle Sprain
Game time! After team announcements are made we are ready to start! About 10 minutes in the first set one of our players landed on an opposing players foot causing him to twist and sprain his ankle.
Usually I try to give athletes a moment before I run on the court/field. Also depending on the sport, event and federation there are regulations of how/when and how long I can be on the court for injuries or blood situations.
This time I saw him go down and was out pretty quickly. By the time I got to him he said right away that he was done. He has also had previous injuries similar so had a pretty good idea what his status was going to be.
The first thing I did was to survey and make sure everything was in it’s proper place and no blood was anywhere. Then asked him to wiggle his toes to make sure there was no compromised muscle or bone injury.
With the assistance of a couple of other players we were able to get him back to the bench so I could do further evaluation. At this time he didn’t have strong signs presenting that an xray was needed, i continued with some conservative treatment.
If you have read my previous blog (Injury Recovery isn’t Just Rest, How to Heal and Get Back to Performance) Icing injuries isn’t usually my first move but in this case it was due to the amount of pain he was in. Ice definitely makes you numb and helps decrease the immediate pain you can feel…but it doesn’t actually help with decreasing swelling or in the healing process, it’s actually the opposite….but I’m also not in the business of making people suffer either. So I iced him for about 15 minutes and then wrapped him in a compression wrap.
I kept a close eye on him during the rest of the match making sure he continued to have feeling and movement in his toes and such. The venue didn’t have crutches available but our stellar local host had her mom bring a pair for him to use.
Unfortunately these were about 10 inches too short for him to use but he was a trooper trying to make them work and to be honest just something to help him not have to put weight on his ankle at this time was most important.
Post Game Hotel Care
After dinner (at 10pm) we made it back to the hotel. There I went through another assessment of his ankle making sure I hadn’t missed anything initially and there weren’t increasing symptoms, which there weren’t. So I had him use the Normatech boots that we had brought to help with some compression, then wrapped him up again for the night.
Early Morning Routine
Our match the following day was at 8pm. I also know that if I don’t get my workout in first thing in the morning it doesn’t get done. My workouts are non-negotiable, so set my alarm for 630am. This is also usually the only “me” time during trips. Once the guys are awake they are my priority.
Also at this time I had noticed that I was running low on Tylenol due to a lot of colds and mild aches and pains earlier in the trip so, was planning on running to the store that was literally around the corner before breakfast to restock.
I had asked this athlete if he gets up early usually and he said no, so I felt pretty good about getting up and doing my normal routine and making it to the store.
I get a text in the middle of my workout saying he had a pretty rough night and was up and wanted to get some treatment before breakfast….
So I finished a slightly abbreviated workout and went back up to attend to him.
At this time he was significantly more swollen than the night before, which wasn’t particularly surprising. I did some light cupping around his liver as well as some other big payoff spots to help reduce swelling. The liver is highly involved in lymphatic flow and waste removal which is what swelling is. Another round of Normatech boots and then I used KT Tape in a spider web method to help reduce swelling. This type of tape job is super helpful in reducing swelling. The stretch that is built into the tape lifts the skin to allow for better blood flow and open channels to help move the fluid out and not get trapped in the area…it’s one of my favorite things for swelling reduction in conjunction to the Swelling Protocol taught by Anna Hartman (@MovwmentREV)
Incident #2…Stomach Bug Hits!
With him situated I ran to the store (I’m still in my sweaty clothes!) and got the meds I needed, headed back and took a very quick shower and made it to breakfast at 930 on the dot! At this time one of the players notified me that his stomach had been bothering him since the previous night.
Was this just a stomach ache or did he have diarrhea or vomiting? He said he’d been having the runs, which I had anticipated may have been an issue for this trip having been in Mexico before myself and getting very sick. I had packed a lot of immodium for this reason, so started him on a course to help this.
Next up was team team meeting then a team stretch and activation led by me.
Mission Accomplished: Crutches
On my way to the team meeting room there happened to be a “health conference" in progress. I noticed that one of the booth set up happened to be a medical supply store. After the stretch session was over I was talking with our team lead (this guy does everything from setting up meals, buying snacks, all the support the team needs while on the trip….this guy is all utility and is indispensable!) We were trying to figure out where we may be able to find a pair of crutches to fit the player. I mentioned the booth so we went over to talk with them. Turns out they have a store a mile away from the hotel! He called to check if they had the size in stock and put them on hold for us! We called an Uber and 30 minutes later had a pair of correct crutches!
It was about time to leave for team lunch by the venue which was a 10 minute van ride (I feel like all we did was eat with a little bit of volleyball thrown in!)
Pregame Treatments
Lunch normally took about an hour including travel so back to the hotel for some pregame treatments for some of the players. Mostly some soft tissue work by me to loosen up some tight areas that have been building up over the 3 week training block and now 3 matches in a row.
Another round of boots for my ankle injury and more immodium for my stomach guy and we are off to the venue for dinner and then game time. (like I said they ate often and a LOT!)
After dinner we were back in the locker room getting taped and such. The ankle was actually feeling better than it had when he woke up so this was promising. The stomach not so much, he atready was feeling worse.
Incident #3 Pregame Chaos!
After I took the team through their warm ups and they were on the court doing their drills and such I went back into the locker room to check on the stomach guy. At that time we decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have the Dr on site take a look at him. She basically said to continue what we were doing and also gave him some medication to reduce the nausea that had started as well.
I left him so he could use the restroom again and the game was getting close to starting so back out to the court. As I’m walking through the tunnel into the stadium I see from across the gym our coach standing by the scorers table with his face covered in blood!
I run over just as the paramedics arrived at him and started to clean up the blood that was coming from a gash in the top of his head.
While I was attending to the stomach guy, there was a part of the stands that had a latch fell on top of his head.
I ran to get my blood kit and joined the Medics in cleaning the wound and then applied some steri strips to hold it shut at least for during the game. I was pretty sure he was going to need stitches though. He was also very adamant about coaching the game and not leaving at that point. I was comfortable with how the wound was dressed and continued to monitor during the game. Also had to check him to make sure he didn’t have a concussion which was also an immediate concern, but he checked out fine for that.
All this before the match even started!
Check on stomach guy between sets 1 and 2….bout the same.
In between sets 2 and 3 I go back to check on stomach guy…at this time he reports maybe feeling a little better, not nauseous….but he was a bit concerned because now the diarrhea was bloody….ugh.
So I go back to the Dr to relay this info (Google Translate is phenomenal!) She now writes a script for antibiotics!
Our team host was with me when I spoke with the Dr. She took the script and filled it while our match was still going and made it back before dinner…again, she was fantastic!)
Unfortunately we didn’t win…but off to dinner, ankle guy on crutches, stomach guy barely able to make the 3 minute walk to the dining area without having to use the restroom and the coach with a bandage literally taped to his head.
Mexican ER Adventures
We get back to the hotel at 1130pm. Set the ankle guy back up in the boots. He had been up and about particularly during the game and wanted to make sure he had a better night than the previous one. Made sure the stomach guy took his antibiotics. Checked on the coach…though I would have liked to think my steri strips would be enough, I knew he needed stitches, So off to the ER. We asked the front desk what the best option would be and we called for an Uber to take us.
The uber dropped us in kind of a random spot, not the ER but not the main entrance so we entered the closest door, which I think was for ambulances only. Thankfully it wasn’t super busy and the people there could probably tell we had no idea and got us to where we needed to be to get seen, again Google Translate for the win!
The nurses and Dr were extremely nice and helpful. At one point I was assisting the Dr while he was placing the 5 stitches in!
After almost 2 hours we were on our way back to the hotel getting back at 3am!
I’m exhausted again just recounting this!
Thankfully we had a little bit of a later start Saturday morning since they had such a late game the night before….I got a whole 4 hours of sleep just to wake up and see what the next 24 hours held….hoping they weren’t as eventful as the previous!
Again is this the norm? No. Is this the average? Also not really. But is this common 100%!
Just a little look into what an Athletic Trainers world looks like. Hope you enjoyed.
I’m getting ready to land and can’t wait to sleep in my own bed tonight!
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