Dr. Bettendorf performs her layback spin during a local exhibition in 2022. (Click to enlarge.)
When she was 2 years old, Brittany A. Bettendorf, MD, MFA, a rheumatologist at the University of Iowa (UI) Hospitals and Clinics, Iowa City, was introduced to figure skating by her mother, a national roller-skating champion and amateur figure skater.
“The first time I stepped on the ice, I loved it,” she says.
“I feel very fortunate and get a lot of satisfaction from what I’m able to do in my free time on the ice, and with my family and career,” she says. “It really makes me happy.”
Dr. Bettendorf competes at a 2019 speedskating meet in Milwaukee. (Click to enlarge.)
Reconnecting
When she was in grade and middle school, Dr. Bettendorf skated every day for about two hours before school. Ribbons, medals and trophies from local and regional competitions were on display in her bedroom.
But figure skating is an independent, and often lonely, sport. In her teens, Dr. Bettendorf swapped it for team sports that enabled her to spend more time with her friends.
Still, figure skating kept nagging her to return. In 2004, during her sophomore year at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., she worked with the athletic director and her motivated teammates to build the Northwestern University Synchronized Skating Team, which still exists today.
Dr. Bettendorf’s son performing his spiral in 2022 at his first competition. (Click to enlarge.)
During that first year, when funds were scarce, Dr. Bettendorf ’s aunt and cousin came to the team’s rescue. Her aunt designed and sewed the team’s costumes, and her older cousin—also an amateur figure skater—coached the team.
She says becoming an Olympic or professional figure skater was never a realistic career choice. She was drawn to rheumatology because it’s a “challenging puzzle,” and she enjoys focusing on rheumatic disease in pregnancy, medical education, and bioethics and humanities.
Figure skating re-entered her life when Dr. Bettendorf was earning her Master of Fine Arts. One class assignment required her to learn a new skill, describe it to others and reveal what she learned about herself.
Dr. Bettendorf chose speed skating, something she had always wanted to try. She competed for about a year. But during one race in 2020, she fell and suffered a concussion.
“That sort of freaked me out,” she recalls. “But I enjoyed being back on the ice, so I decided to get back into figure skating and let that be a part of my life again. I started figure skating again in the spring 2021. I hired a coach, and now I skate several times a week after work.”
She’s now remastering some of the difficult jumps she performed as a teenager, overcoming her fear of falling, and wears protective gear like wrist guards. Over the years, she has injured herself three times: when she was about 9 years old, she fell, requiring stitches in her chin; during college, she fell and a skater behind her skated over her, leaving a scar on her thigh; and in February 2022, she fell and broke her wrist.
Coming Home
Despite her love of skating, she says rheumatology grabs the gold medal when it comes to her career choice.
“The consults we were getting during my fellowship were things I had never seen before,” she says, explaining that orthopedics and sports medicine were never on her radar. “Gathering enough clues to piece the puzzle together is super fun for me vs. dealing with the mechanics of an injury like a broken wrist.”
Still, skating will always be in her life. This year, she began competing at the adult level and recently won her first competition at the State Games of America. (Shhh! She says she nabbed first place because no one else competed at her level.) “When I step on the ice, it feels like I’m home,” she says.
Dr. Bettendorf says her 7-year-old son now shows promise as a figure skater, whereas her 5-year-old daughter prefers to dress up in her mom’s costumes rather than skate.
Carol Patton, a freelance writer based in Las Vegas, writes the Rheum After 5 column for The Rheumatologist.
