My Reality (24 page)

“Terrell Owens just came up and talked to us!” I said.

We were on cloud nine! It was a very cool moment.

The one thing that bothered me about being in the public eye at the time had to do with my relationship with Tye. As far as the TV viewing public was concerned, Jason and I had just broken up on Monday, and now, here it was the following Monday, and I was already in a brand-new relationship. And not only that, but I was so happy and so in love. Many people couldn’t understand how I could have moved on so quickly, and they felt like I had played the victim and acted heartbroken when I had never really loved Jason. Of course, the problem was that they didn’t understand the real time line. And I never had the chance to publicly explain that we had filmed “After the Final Rose” nearly three months after taping for
The Bachelor
ended, or that Tye and I had this whole long history
way
before I ever even met Jason or got caught up in the Bachelor Bubble.

My relationship was great, my work life was amazing, and I had my family’s full support. I couldn’t have been happier. The only
problem was that, with how grueling the show was, I was getting tinier and tinier as the season went on. I mean, think of how much you have to eat when you are literally working out eight hours a day, straight! It’s nearly impossible to keep weight on! No matter how much I ate—and just ask Tye, I can eat—I couldn’t seem to make the weight stick, and I became increasingly fragile. My body was definitely getting put through the ringer, and I could feel it starting to shut down on me.

The second to last week, we did the Argentine tango, which was a dance where we were allowed to do lifts. So Tony was constantly lifting me, and twisting me, and turning me. Well, on the last lift of the dance, during one of our final practices, I felt a huge
POP
across the right side of my back. When Tony put me down, I couldn’t take a deep breath, and I was in a lot of pain. But I tried to work through the pain, thinking it couldn’t be
that
bad of an injury. When I decide to do something, I become very stubborn and determined, and so I kept on practicing, even though it hurt
a lot.

I sucked it up and went through with the live show on Monday night. But as soon as the dance was over, I collapsed in pain. Tony had to help me over to the judges table because I could barely walk, let alone breathe.

Not good.

The next day, we started our new dance for the next week. It was the jive. We did okay in practice, but the jive is not like the waltz, which is very slow and elegant. It’s constant and very high energy. It literally felt like we were running a race for three minutes. I was having trouble breathing, and I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to make it through the routine when we filmed the show on Monday night.

Tony finally suggested that we go to a doctor, just to make sure
that everything was okay. I reluctantly agreed. I didn’t want to admit that something could be wrong. We had come so far in the competition, and I didn’t want to have to give up because of a stupid injury.

The doctor ended up taking X-rays, and he came back with bad news. He pointed to the film he had just hung on the wall. “It looks like you have three hairline fractures on your right rib cage,” he said.

Oh my gosh! Fractures? Ribs? What?

“So . . . what does this mean?” I asked. “I mean, we have to practice. Can I still dance?”

Even as I asked the question, I feared his answer.

He sighed and shrugged.

“I mean, you can,” he said. “It is very unlikely that dancing further will actually
break
your ribs. So it’s really just about pain management. Because injuries to the ribs are always painful, this is going to be the largest hurdle.”

All I heard from what he said was: You can.

Done! We will keep practicing then!

And so we practiced as usual, but by the time the live show came around, I was in terrible pain. I was told that after we finished our rehearsal on the stage, I could go get a shot that would numb the pain temporarily. I thought that sounded like a great idea and decided to go ahead and do it.

Tony and I went through rehearsal, and right after that, I left for the hospital to get my shot. Tye and Tony both came with me. The doctor had me lay on my side, and he injected the first shot. Yes, I said first shot. Because I had three fractures, I had to get three shots. Now this was nothing like how a needle stings when it goes into your skin. This was excruciating, like bee stings going all the way
up and down my body. I was cringing and crying. Tye was holding my hands and Tony was looking on, helpless. And I still had two shots to go.

“You need to wait just a second while I kind of recoup,” I said.

I sat up, and my chest hurt when I took a deep breath, which seemed odd. But I didn’t think too much about it—yet.

“Are you ready to get the next one?” the doctor asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “But if you can just do the next two at the same time, it’ll be a lot easier for me.”

So he gave me the next two shots at the same time, and, again, it was the worst kind of pain. I rolled back over and sat up.

“My chest really, really hurts,” I said. “Like it hurts to take a deep breath.”

“Just sit here for a minute,” he said. “It should get better.”

Then the doctor left the room, and Tye, Tony, and I sat there together. After maybe thirty seconds, I looked at them both because I was really scared.

“Something’s wrong,” I said. “Something’s going on. I feel like I can’t catch my breath. My neck is either swelling or closing. I can’t take a deep breath.”

I sat on the table struggling to breathe. Talk about panic!

And then, I stopped talking because I couldn’t talk anymore. Tye and Tony were both freaking out and called the doctor back in as quickly as they could. Only when the doctor arrived, he didn’t come over to help me. He took one look at me and started yelling.

“Call 911!,” he told Tony.

What?? Did the DOCTOR just say to call 911?? Aren’t we at the hospital?

“Get out the defibrillators,” he said to Tye.

I’ve never seen a look of terror like I saw on Tye’s face at that
moment. He started fumbling around trying to get the defibrillator out of the plastic casing it was in on the wall, which was sealed tight.

Now I was really scared. But I couldn’t say anything at this point, so I just looked at Tye and tried to communicate with my eyes:
Help me! Please, do something, because I can’t breathe!

As anyone who has ever had an episode where they couldn’t breathe or catch their breath knows, it is literally the scariest feeling in the world. Just pure terror. After about a minute, I could feel everything kind of opening back up again. And I could finally relax enough to look around me again. Tye and Tony were both crying in opposite corners of the room. I tried to take small breaths, but my back still really hurt. I looked at the doctor.

“Am I having some kind of an allergic reaction?” I asked.

“No, that’s not it,” he said.

But he never actually told me what it was that had happened to me. To be honest, I didn’t care at this point. Even though I still had the stabbing pain in my chest and back, I could breathe, and that’s all that mattered to me.

The doctor gave me some candy to suck on to make sure everything was still moving okay through my esophagus. Thirty minutes later, he let me go. I thought this was a little strange, because my ribs still hurt as much as they had before, only now I couldn’t take a deep breath. It felt like I was being stabbed in the chest and in the back. But I figured he was a doctor, so he knew what he was doing.

Tony and I arrived back at the studio, and it was now about an hour until we went live. I was so nervous because I actually felt worse than I had before we’d left for the hospital.

“Tony,” I said. “I can’t really take a deep breath right now. I can’t even talk.”

We told the producers what was going on, and they had us go out on the stage one more time to see if I could get through the routine. I danced for maybe twenty seconds, and then I just collapsed. They had to carry me offstage. My parents and Tye saw the whole thing and were terrified.

The producers brought in another doctor, just to get a second opinion. And lo and behold, he told us that the first doctor had punctured my lung! Let me repeat: punctured my lung! What I had felt was the numbing medicine as it went up my esophagus and made it so I couldn’t feel anything. And the sharp stabbing pains I was feeling was from the air that had escaped my lungs and entered my chest cavity. (Apparently, your body is not supposed to have air floating around in it.)

The whole thing was really scary, especially because I learned afterward that it can be really dangerous when a person’s lung is punctured, and I had no idea. Luckily, the second doctor was really good. He came over to my apartment several times that night to check on me and make sure I could still walk and everything.

Obviously, I wasn’t allowed to perform that night, and the show went on without me. But no one wanted to make a big deal out of it, so I was told to say that I couldn’t dance because I had just bruised my ribs. The whole experience was really frustrating because I absolutely would have danced if I’d only had bruised ribs, even though I’m sure it would have hurt some. And I couldn’t say anything about what was really going on. All I could do was sit in the wings and watch the show go on without me. Because I was not there to dance live, producers showed the audience a video of our last rehearsal on the stage (right before we’d left for the hospital). And that’s what the judges had to score. Needless to say, Tony and I were at the very bottom of the leaderboard after that night.

I was so nervous going into the elimination night the next day. I just had a feeling that Tony and I were going home. And not only that, I couldn’t even explain
why
I wasn’t able to dance. I’m sure the audience thought that I was just being dramatic and wanted sympathy or something. I was really stressed and upset.

“I just don’t want to go home this way,” I said to Tony. “I want to go home because I didn’t dance well enough, or I had a bad day. I don’t want to go home because I wasn’t even given the chance to go out and prove myself.”

Tony and I stood on that stage—in the bottom two—and clung to each other tightly. It was definitely the most nerve-wracking moment of the whole show. But, thankfully, we somehow made it through. And, more than ever, I was determined to dance better than ever.

Tony and I actually returned that next week and scored our first 30 on our samba! Talk about coming back with a vengeance! We were just one week away from the finals at this point, and I was so excited to have made it that far! I was mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted—as everyone on the show was at this point—but we could definitely see that the end was near.

The night of the
DWTS
finale, the vibe was much different backstage—at least between Tony and me. Of course we wanted to win, but at this point, we were so excited to have made it this far that we just wanted to have fun. Regardless of how we placed, this would be our last time out on the stage together. So we decided to just have a great time and make the most out of it.

I had some pretty steep competition, too. Gilles Marini from
Sex and the City
, and Olympic gold medalist Shawn Johnson. I couldn’t complain about losing to either of them, because they both really were phenomenal. By the end of the night, I was just so relieved.

We were done!

After twelve weeks—ten to twelve hours a day, seven days a week—we were done! The three finalists were all standing on stage waiting to hear our fate, and for the first time on an elmination night, I wasn’t nervous at all. Tony and I couldn’t make it any further. There wasn’t another show after this one—we had literally gone to the end of the line. So first place, or third place, I was ecstatic.

As it turned out, Tony and I did get third place. Gilles got second place, and our little Shawn got first. There was a huge celebration on stage, with confetti and everything! And we were done!! I wasn’t going to have to wake up at seven o’clock for an eight-hour practice tomorrow! My feet and body could finally heal!

Ahhhh!

The onstage celebration ended quickly for us, because all the finalists and their guests got to fly to New York City on the private Disney jet. Yes, folks, I said private plane! I mean, who does that unless they’re Mariah Carey or Tom Cruise?! Well, we did! To be honest, though, the only reason we took a private plane was to be in New York in time to appear on
Good Morning America
and
Live!
with Regis and Kelly
the next morning. That was a whirlwind:
Dancing
was done filming around eight o’clock. We flew out of Los Angeles by ten o’clock that night, and we were in New York and ready to go on the air by six o’clock the next morning.

Phew!

The three finalists and our dance partners were sitting on
GMA
talking to the hosts when Robin Roberts and Diane Sawyer surprised each of us with special video messages. The one for Shawn Johnson was from her gymnastics team. The one for Gilles Marini was from his kids. I figured mine was going to be from Tye or my family. But when they started to play my video, all of the sudden, Derek Jeter
popped up on the TV screen. When I heard him say my name, I lost it! I don’t even remember what he said to me because I was making such a big fool of myself. I loved Derek Jeter, as in I used to say that he was my future husband. Before I met Tye, of course. I couldn’t believe that he had agreed to tape a special message just for me. Plus, the producers gave me a ball and a hat that he had signed. My life really was too good to be true!

T
hings got even better after
Dancing
because Tye and I finally got to spend some time together. The week after the
Dancing
finale was done, we took our first big vacation together, just the two of us, to St. Lucia. The funniest thing happened while we were there. We were staying at a resort, and I guess the staff had heard that some TV personality was going to be a guest at the hotel.