Her doctor suggested she consider platelet-rich plasma
(PRP) therapy, a treatment used on athletes like Tiger Woods. The alternative was surgery, and Shelley chose the PRP at an Oregon sports medicine clinic. “Of course he says, ‘It’s considered experimental, so it’s out of pocket,’” says Shelley. “I figured it would be maybe two thousand dollars, because for the horses it costs about that. He said, ‘It’s going to be $350.’ 350? Okay!” As a horse owner, she considered the therapy a good
experiment. “We do it a lot with horse injuries. We think it works, but they can’t tell us it works.” She says that for the first four weeks she didn’t feel any
different. “About six weeks out from my PRP, I went to roll out of bed, and it didn’t hurt. It started to feel better, and I took up physical therapy.” She resumed riding in January 2015, less than six months after her injury. At the HITS Thermal Desert Circuit and then Showpark and Del Mar, she competed up to 1.40 meters. Shelley says she took it easy to
avoid reinjuring herself. Then they went to Thunderbird Show Park in May. “I won the Grand Prix on Revenge. That was very exciting.” The class she won was the $56,000 Lang- ley School District Foundation Grand Prix, at the CSI2* BC Open. Another plus for that win—Shelley’s biggest ever—was that Rich and Flexible placed fourth. Shelley and Revenge competed at
1.45 meters at Spruce Meadows for the rest of that summer.
Shelley Fellers riding Clio 35 (Holsteiner by Contender) in the 1.20 meter Farmvet Jump- ers, last March at HITS Thermal.
SECOND INJURY But bad luck continued to dog Shelley. Back home in Oregon later in 2015, she had a bad fall on a young jumper. “We were outside on the grass, schooling an oxer and
somehow he hooked a stud [from his shoe] in his other boot and he came down. He never unfolded his legs. When he hit the ground, I shot off the front. I remember thinking, ‘He’s going to tip over and land on top of me,’ so I tried to remove myself a little bit and I sort of scrammed on my way out,” Shelley says. On the ground, she was able to sit up. “I went to try to get
up, and my arm was just kind of hanging. I thought it was dislocated and I was really freaking out,” she continues. The verdict was that she’d separated her shoulder. Physi-
cal therapy was an option but she preferred to have surgery. One of the barn’s customers was able to have Shelley seen
by an expert local surgeon: Dr. Scott Grewe. “Dr. Grewe said that it was good we did the surgery,” she continues, “because my left shoulder blade had gone through the tendon. It was like a knife. I would have spent all this time [with physical
30 July/August 2017
therapy] and never would have gotten better. He actually took a ligament from a cadaver to replace the one that was obliterated.” She was instructed not to ride until the end of the year.
NOT AGAIN Before the Fellers family drove south to Thermal in January 2016 and just as she was starting to ride again, Shelley had a minor accident at home—and not on a horse this time. “I got out of our truck and stepped into a pothole and rolled my ankle badly. I do it all the time, so I didn’t really think anything of it.” But her ankle started hurting at the Thermal show. “I was feeling soreness up my leg. It was weird. I thought, ‘I must be really out of shape.’ So I kept riding and jumping.” One day she rode two classes.
Warming up for the second, she could feel increased pain in her ankle. “I got up to the in gate and Rich was going over the course with me. He looked at me and said, ‘Are you even listening to what I’m saying?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I am listening,’ but I was think- ing to myself, ‘I don’t know why my ankle is really hurting me.’” On the 1.40m course, she jumped
an oxer and then turned to another oxer by the announcer’s stand. “My horse jumped really big over the oxer, and as I landed I heard my ankle snap. I must have yelled out, oww!” There was only one more jump, but Shelley decided to quit. She pulled up and the announcer asked if
she was okay. “I walked out of the ring and Rich said, ‘Why did you pull up?’ I said,’ I think I just broke my ankle.’ So I pulled my boot off and the ankle wasn’t out of place. I thought, ‘This is weird. Maybe I’m just getting to be a wuss.” At urgent care, an X-ray showed no fracture. Fitted with
an air brace over her black and blue ankle, she didn’t ride the following week. “Then as I was walking courses, my ligament kept sliding around my ankle. I’d have to sort of push it back in.” An MRI revealed she’d torn her peroneal tendon. “It hooks
into your ankle and goes up your leg, which is why I had that soreness,” Shelley explains. “It splits, with a main strand and another one which I’d torn. Surgery was once again the best route.”
Back in Oregon, she was again able to consult with a top
orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Douglas Beaman. “Dr. Beaman said that the little part was so far gone they just took it out. The other one, he repaired. I’d torn it. There’s also something that holds your ligaments in place, and that had torn off the bone. So they drilled holes in my ankle bone and stitched that back on so it wouldn’t slide out of place.”
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