MORRIS COUNTY

Rutgers cheerleader coaches at Mt. Olive after baffling injury

New nerve surgery cuts through headache pain

Michael Izzo
@MIzzoDR
Morgan Lowrey, a 19-year-old Rutgers cheerleader who suffered a severe injury during a pyramid, now transitioning to coaching. She is helping out Mount Olive's junior varsity cheer squad while at Rutgers. October 6, 2015, Mount Olive, NJ.

MOUNT OLIVE Morgan Lowrey describes the ordeal as her “55-week headache.”

“It felt like a knife started at the base of my neck and went out my forehead,” said Lowrey, 21, of Mount Olive. “When I went to doctors they would ask me about my headaches, but it wasn’t headaches. It was one constant headache.”

The pain started about six months after she suffered a broken nose and whiplash during a “pyramid routine gone bad” more than three years ago, when Lowrey was a freshman on the cheerleading squad at Rutgers University.

“Spotting a new three-level pyramid I had a flyer fall head first into my face, breaking my nose,” Lowrey said of the December 2012 accident. "I went to the ER, they said get to an (ear nose and throat doctor) within a week, and they would take it from there. I had surgery a week later, healed great and the ENT (ear, nose and throat doctor) saw no problems.”

But the following summer, the headache began.

Lowrey initially thought it was her sinuses acting up, but the pain never went away.

Nausea, light sensitivity, involuntary arm flails and a general searing pain caused her to miss time at work and school, spending many days lying in a dark bedroom with her head pressed against a pillow.

Morgan Lowrey, a 19-year-old Rutgers cheerleader who suffered a severe injury during a pyramid, now transitioning to coaching. She is helping out Mount Olive's junior varsity cheer squad while at Rutgers. October 6, 2015, Mount Olive, NJ.

The weeks turned into months without the headache subsiding despite countless unsuccessful “migraine medication cocktails” and trips to doctors and neurologists. Tests brought no answers, showing Lowrey was healthy, and so when her sophomore year began, she did her best to power through school when she could.

“My family lived on a number pain scale for the entire year, either my mom or dad asking ‘what’s your number today?’ And it ranged from 3 to 9 with no rhyme or reason,” Lowrey said. “One day, in between classes, my mom had to come get me because I felt so sick.”

By spring 2013, Lowrey had been to four neurology groups, two headache specialists, a chiropractor, changed her diet and undergone physical therapy with no real progress.

Eventually, her family found a term that described close to what she’d been experiencing; occipital neuralgia.

Her pain wasn’t considered a migraine. It wasn’t really considered anything, she said. It was a buildup of scar tissue covering nerves, which lead to the headache.

Morgan Lowrey, a 19-year-old Rutgers cheerleader who suffered a severe injury during a pyramid, now transitioning to coaching. She is helping out Mount Olive's junior varsity cheer squad while at Rutgers. October 6, 2015, Mount Olive, NJ.

After 10 months with her headache, Lowrey met with Dr. Matthew Kaufman at the Plastic Surgery Center in Shrewsbury.

He told Lowrey he believed her body “held in the pain” from the broken nose for six months until it couldn’t hold it in any longer, and the headache could be linked to that trauma.

“We all know cheerleading can be a risky sport with broken bones, bruises, wounds,” Kaufman said. “I’ve treated facial fractures and wound suffered during cheerleading before, but never this type of problem before Morgan.”

Kaufman said Lowrey’s injury is typically caused by some sort of trauma, from a sports injury or car crash to a head injury sustained in the military.

“That would likely be the type of headache caused by nerve damage,” Kaufman said.

Kaufman performed microvascular decompression surgery on Lowrey in August 2014, a five-hour operation where he “untangled” the nerves in Lowrey’s neck, relieving pressure on the compressed nerves.

“I woke up from surgery in tears because I was feeling better right away,” Lowrey said. “I was in pain, but it was different from the headache. It was just surgical pain where he worked on me.”

Kaufman said the procedure is fairly new – he started about eight years ago – and he’s one of fewer than five doctors in New Jersey that performs it. He specializes in microsurgical nerve repair, so the procedure is similar to others he performs, which he said carries minimal risk.

“I’m working in and around the face and neck, so yes there are some risks like numbness in the area, but it’s an outpatient procedure and less invasive,” Kaufman said. “It’s not like spinal surgery.”

One year removed from surgery, Lowrey is successfully balancing her college course load and her coaching duties, while being able to enjoy her life outside the sport and school.

“In my 19-year-old life, I didn’t want to do anything. I don’t wish what I went through on my worst enemy. Studying and homework were enough of a struggle,” Lowrey said. “But now that whole life is over. I’m able to do things, I have the energy to study, and I’m getting normal sleep. I’m not making plans around my pain anymore.”

Lowrey took the year after her freshman year off from cheering because of pain and chose to coach instead of trying to rejoin the Rutgers squad.

She previously  coached recreational cheer in her hometown of Jackson and missed being involved in the sport after her accident.

In Mount Olive, she started coaching the junior varsity team in August 2014, the same month of the successful surgery. Her squad cheers at  football and basketball games.

“The girls are awesome, so fun to work with and see them learn new skills over the course of the season,” Lowrey said. “And as friendships are formed as the year goes on practices become more fun.”

Morgan Lowrey, a 19-year-old Rutgers cheerleader who suffered a severe injury during a pyramid, now transitioning to coaching. She is helping out Mount Olive's junior varsity cheer squad while at Rutgers. October 6, 2015, Mount Olive, NJ.

While Lowrey isn’t coaching competitive cheerleading, her squad does more than just raise pom-poms. She said her girls practice the same moves found in competitive cheer that can lead to injuries like hers.

“Those things are going to happen,” Lowrey said. “It’s the reality of cheer people don’t really see. Cheerleading can be dangerous.”

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness, cheerleading causes the highest rate of “catastrophic injury” in high school sports, with injuries just as likely to occur during practice.

A bill introduced last year in the state Senate would make cheerleading a sport in New Jersey.

The bill,  S-2275, sponsored by Sen. Brian Stack, D-Hudson, would require training and safety precautions that apply to other sports  apply to cheerleading, specifically the prevention and treatment of concussions and other head-related injuries.

Lowrey is now in her senior year of college, commuting to Rutgers three days per week from Mount Olive. She’s studying ecology, evolution, and natural resources and next year will enter graduate school for education.

Lowrey plans to teach middle school science and coach cheerleading, and hopes to student teach in Mount Olive next year so she can continue to coach.

Lowrey hopes her story will reach others with similar symptoms that might not know how to treat the symptoms.

“I want people to know that there are procedures that might work for you,” Lowrey said. “Don’t suffer for longer than you need to or live in pain.”

Morgan Lowrey, a 19-year-old Rutgers cheerleader who suffered a severe injury during a pyramid, now transitioning to coaching. She is helping out Mount Olive's junior varsity cheer squad while at Rutgers. October 6, 2015, Mount Olive, NJ.

Kaufman said he’s very selective when it comes to choosing candidates for the surgery.

“Not every patient with a headache can have surgery, nor should they,” Kaufman said. “We’re not overutilizing a new technique. It’s for someone like Morgan whose headache was caused by nerve damage.”

Kaufman said he hopes to educate the community and the medical field about this emerging treatment.

“This treatment is underutilized. I don’t claim to be a headache expert but I am a nerve expert,” he said. “People don’t normally seek out plastic surgeons for headaches, and surgery isn’t normally the answer, but maybe it can help you.”

Kaufman said patients typically find him on their own, and it will likely take time before the surgery is widely embraced.

“It’s very similar to carpal tunnel surgery,” Kaufman said. “Now no doctor would think twice before referring someone, but in the first 10 years they were skeptical. We’re in the early period, but in 30 years this will be more standard.”

Staff Writer Michael Izzo: 973-428-6636; mizzo@GannettNJ.com