On The Road To Recovery: Hannah Bluck (Wales youth international, Avascular Necrosis injury) – as told by mother Kerstin Bluck

A departure from the usual treatment-table interview, in which Kerstin Bluck relates how her daughter Hannah was diagnosed with a rare condition that threatened her football career. Capped seventeen times across three Wales youth age groups by fifteen, Hannah slipped on astroturf in March 2013, dislocating her ankle and fracturing her tibia and fibula, spending ten days in hospital before her fibula was pinned and plated and twelve weeks non weight-bearing. When she could not progress, scans showed the fracture had healed but a vast area of her tibia lacked blood supply. Avascular necrosis of the distal tibia had not been seen in that area before. A Facebook post led to the MRI being shown to leading orthopaedic doctors, and Hannah has since worked back to full contact.