Dirty Dancing Analysis: Jennifer Grey's Autobiography -- Part 22

Continued from Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20 and Part 21

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Chapter 21, titled "Dancing With the Scars", tells about events in 2010, culminating in November, when she won the Dancing With the Stars competition.

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During the years from 2002-2009, Grey was happy and busy raising her daughter Stella.

Every single day, every month, every year, I woke up when Stella woke up. .... Made breakfast and the dreaded school lunch, did school drop-off and marketing, then school pickup, snack, homework, dinner, dishes, bath time, and limping toward the finish line, through that stickiest of wickets, the bedtime ritual.

I was in charge of arranging all of Stella's after-school activities -- swim class, dance class, art class, playdates -- and her dentist and doctor appointments. ...

I looked after our beloved dogs. .... I went to Pilates a few times a week after drop-off and before grocery shopping, and I never stopped going to my regular [Alcoholic Anonymous] meetings.

During those years she was diagnosed as suffering from an anxiety disorder, which was treated with a regime of anti-depressant medicine.

She did occasional acting jobs, but the opportunities and offers declined as her career drive waned and as she became an older woman.

Meanwhile, Grey never watched the Dancing With the Stars television show. She sometimes received suggestions and even invitations to participate, but she did not have the time or interest. She had not danced seriously since filming Dirty Dancing in 1986.

In 2008, her close friend Marlee Matlin, the deaf actress, participated in Dancing With the Stars and felt: "It's one of the most powerful experiences I've every had. It's life-changing." Matlin subsequently pushed the show's producers and Grey toward Grey's participation in the show. In 2009, the producers invited Grey to watch the live show, which convinced Grey to participate.

That decision triggered Grey's anxiety, although she continued to take her anti-depressant medicine. As an additional treatment of her anxiety, she began to visit a professional hypnotist. Grey tape-recorded her hypnosis sessions and then listened to them twice a day.

Because of her occasional neck pain following her 1987 car accident, Grey's husband suggested that she Grey get her neck examined by a neurological spinal surgeon before she did the show. The surgeon studied the MRI and then told her, "You may have one of the worst necks I've ever seen."

Grey's spinal canal should have been about one-and-a-half centimeters long, but it had been crushed to just a few millimeters.

He warned her:

If you're dancing and you get jolted pretty good -- not to mention if you were driving and got rear-ended -- you'd be permanently paralyzed from the neck down.

You shouldn't even be in a car, in my opinion.

I would do this [neck surgery] yesterday. To get out of danger, I need to fuse levels C4 and C5. Once I've jockeyed bck C4, the vertebra that's slipped forward, I'd stabilize the two levels with a titanium plate and four screws. That alone should alleviate a lot of your pain. ...

The ballistic impact from the whiplash years ago tore the interspinous ligament and facet capsule. This created instability at C4 and C5. And where there's supposed to be a natural curve to the neck, your neck not only lost the curve and became straight-up-and-down, but over time, has progressed to the point where it's bending in the other direction.

Grey got the surgery and then did the physical therapy, which lasted six months. The treatment was successful, and she ultimately felt much better. The surgeon cleared her to dance on the show.

The neck MRI revealed that her thyroid gland was enlarged and perhaps cancerous. A biopsy revealed that the gland indeed was cancerous, and so she had it removed. Grey figures that her decisions to participate in the show and then to get her neck examined saved her from thyroid cancer.

Eventually Grey did begin to participate in the show, with professional dancer Derek Hough. Now she had to wear high heels, which she had not worn for many years, and suffered much pain. She was taken to a podiatrist, who diagnosed her with Morton's neuroma, a trapped nerve on the ball of her foot, between her third and fourth toe. During her participation in the show, that problem was treated with cortisone shots. (After the show ended, the podiatrist removed the neuroma surgically.)

Because of her anxiety and physical problems, Grey almost dropped out of the show, but her husband and daughter persuaded her to continue.

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Grey's telling of her participation in the show is quite interesting, especially if you have watched the show a lot, which I have done. She tells about the show's routine and about its backstage activities. She tells how she and Hough rehearsed and how they progressed through the competition, week by week, as the other contestants were eliminated, couple by couple. Eventually she and Hough won the competition.

The experience was physically difficult and exhausting for Grey. Despite the cortisone shots, her foot continued to hurt. On the very last day, she began to suffer a hip pain that was so bad that went to a hospital emergency ward. An MRI revealed that she had ruptured a lumbar disk in her spine. She was able to participate in the show's final night only because the hospital doctors injected steroids into her spine.

The challenge of Dancing With the Stars requires an inordinate of courage for anyone. For me? It took everything I had. ...

Doing the show rewired me. I had spent so much of my life not advocating for myself, refusing the call. But taking on this adventure put me in the center of my story.