Carmen Bott: Skilled Without Build, Avoiding Art Scars & Stop Speaking for Your Children

A lot of the times, the first time you meet parents is in an unfortunate situation.

And it's because one of their children or maybe multiple children have suffered what would be called a catastrophic injury in many cases.

Not that you can't come back, but it's difficult.

You are known as the ACL whisperer in some circles.

When you find parents and families in that situation, what are you finding and what do those conversations look like?

Well, I mean, what I'm finding is it's happening at younger and younger ages, which is really alarming.

The profile of the ACL injured athlete 20 years ago was usually a college-level athlete or maybe even a new pro with many years of training under their belt.

Now we're starting to see a lot more pediatric cases.

And a lot of parents are feeling very confused, very alarmed, very traumatized by the situation.

If they have a 12 or a 13-year-old that has literally just begun their sport adventures and all of a sudden now are presented with a year of rehab at least.

And that's the other part with the pediatric cases is these cases involve an untrained body.

So we have a physiology and we have musculature that are not fully developed, both from a strength and conditioning standpoint, but also from a growth and maturation standpoint.

So we're dealing with that on top of the other losses that come with a major injury, like you're not with your friends all of a sudden, you're not going to practice anymore, people are forgetting about you.

So there's a around that too.

And then there's decisions around, well, what type of graft should I have? Should I have this one? Should I go to see this surgeon? Should I do the LET procedure? Which one has the lowest risk? And it goes on and on.

So it becomes this massive amount of decisions that when really a kid at 12 years old should be deciding what to buy their friend for their birthday party.

or what movie to watch on a Friday night with their family.

They shouldn't be worried about working with mom and dad on a rehab plan.

But unfortunately, Scott, that is where we are now, and there is a higher prevalence of ACL reconstructions in pediatric cases, more than there's ever been.

There's also nearly half of youth athletes' injuries now are also overuse injuries.

which is really interesting.

So, you know, back in our day, we'd always see like little Johnny, right? With a broken arm, he'd have a cast on, right? Oh, Johnny broke his arm again, skateboarding down the hill and then fell headfirst into a ditch, right? Or I remember in seventh grade, my PE teacher used to put like buckets of water on the snow on this massive hill and just let us like rip down this hill in the middle of the day on our sleds into again, another ditch, And of course, you know, so-and-so would break their arm or break their leg.

And it was just sort of part of being a kid.

But now we're seeing like tendinopathies that we typically see in middle-aged women that are going through menopause.

So it's like, holy mackerel, what is going on and why is this happening? And what can we do, you know, to safeguard against it? I am really careful to use the word prevent.