Roxy Shahidi was "unable to breathe" after dislocating her rib during 'Dancing On Ice' training.
Roxy Shahidi unable to breathe after DOI injury
The 40-year-old 'Emmerdale' actress was left in agony after suffering the injury and admitted she struggled with agonising spasms.
She told The Sun newspaper: "I dislocated my rib and I felt very sorry for myself. I didn't even know that was a thing. It was hard to breathe. If I coughed or sneezed it was agony. Absolute spasms.
"But over the course of about three weeks, it got better and over Christmas, it's really rested. And all I've got left is like a lump where it's kind of come out, which is scar tissue, so I've just got to be careful with it and if I feel it again, get strapped up.
"That's been the main physical issue that I've had. They think it's been apparently it's quite a common injury with the lifts, but it didn't happen doing a lift.
"he muscles kind of tighten up and it slowly ekes out after, like repeated compression.
"I was sat in the car, dropping my daughter off at school.
"I sneezed and like, all of my body went into spasm, I've never felt pain like it. And I literally, like, I couldn't breathe for if it felt like 10 minutes, I could barely open the car door, it took me about 10 minutes to get out of the car.
"I had no idea what had happened and as soon as I spoke to Sharon the physio, she was like, 'Yeah, that's quite a common injury for skaters. It comes from the kind of the compression on the ribs and, you know, the compression of the rib cage.'
"So she's given me exercises to work on strengthening and stretching exercises and that I've been doing every day and it certainly feels a lot better, but once that's happened there is always that anxiety, that it's going to happen again, you know, because the lifts are just going to get bigger and bigger as you go on."
Roxy recently revealed she is thrilled to be finally taking part in the show, seven years after she was first approached about it.
She said: "I wanted to do the show nearly seven years ago, I thought it’d be fabulous, lots of sequins and big hair, but then I realised I was 12 weeks pregnant.
“I didn’t know when I originally had the meeting, so I then had to say ‘Oh look, I’m pregnant, I don’t think it's going to be a good idea for me’.
“Then my daughter was small, and it’s a huge commitment, it’s very demanding - but I just knew for a long time it wasn’t really something that would be right for me to do.
"And then this year I got the call, 'Do you want to pop in?' and I was like, 'Oh, do I?' I'm a little bit older now and a bit more cautious.
"But after ten minutes on the ice, all my anxieties melted away."
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