Donny Osmond is one in a series of injuries from the reality show "Dancing with the Stars." He was dancing this week with a broken toe. A fractured toe can be quite painful, depending on the location, angle, and severity of the break in the bone(s). I speak from personal experience on this injury. I fractured one of my toes while I was a surgical resident and had no choice but to work, walk on it, wear closed toe shoes, and stand on it for prolonged periods of time. However, I did not continue to run or dance or engage in other sports for the weeks that was required for it to heal.
But...there seems to be a trend on this show with injuries and the stars continuing to dance and perform while injured. We saw this in the past few weeks with Tom DeLay who continued to dance on stress fractures in both feet until it got to the point where he had to quit the show...eventually. Other previous foot & ankle injuries included Misty-May Treanor with a ruptured Achilles tendon, Lance Bass with a toe fracture, and Kristi Yamaguchi with an ankle injury.
This is similar to what us physicians see with "weekend athletes" or runners to try to do too much, too soon. Proper sports training is just that--training. If an athlete is a beginner, such as these celebrities, with respect to a particular sport, then a gradual and incremental training process in necessary to prevent injury. If this does not occur, injury is more than likely to happen. So it is not surprising to me and many of my colleagues that these stars are getting injured at such a high rate. Perhaps the medical professionals associated with the show could point this out to the show executives and try to do something about it...or perhaps we will continue to see another series of injuries in upcoming episodes.