Backstage Buzz: How Cheryl Gave Cristian a Needed Lift

• May 6, 2008 02:07 PM ET
• by danceteam

It's one thing to sustain a serious injury while you're performing and then let the adrenaline pumping through your body allow you to carry on. It's quite another to be alone and in pain, away from the spotlights, and scared that the decision you made to keep going was the wrong decision.

That's what happened over the past few days to Cristian de la Fuente, who ruptured a tendon in his left arm doing the samba on April 28th edition of Dancing with the Stars, then announced the next day that he had the approval of his doctor to delay the surgery needed to repair it and stay on the show. That decision felt good on Tuesday. But by Wednesday? "My arm started hurting and I was like, 'Oh my god. I can't drop out,'" says de la Fuente. "I told the producers that I wanted to stay. They changed the show for us to stay so we can't quit. What have I done?"

Part of the problem is that de la Fuente can't take powerful painkillers because he doesn't know if they'll make him feel disoriented and dizzy. "I don't know what reaction my body's going to have to them," he says. "And I have to dance, I have to hold Cheryl [Burke, his pro partner], lift Cheryl."

But he kept going and it was Burke who made it all work (though she stopped short of attending doctor appointments with him. "I can't handle that stuff," she says). But she came up with a plan not only to dance around his bad arm but to do the one lift per dance that was suddenly approved for the first time this season, two weeks before the finals. "She did it one way and it didn't work," shares de la Fuente. "And then she fixed it. And then it didn't work again and she fixed it again. She's not only a great dancer, she's a great choreographer and a great friend."

"I didn't really tell him, but I was nervous [Monday night]," says Cheryl. "I was nervous that I was going to push him too hard in the tango because there was adrenaline running through my body, too."

De la Fuente took 10 Advils over the course of Monday before the show. On a pain scale of one to 10, he says his arm when the injury occurred "was close to a 10. Now it's a two. But the doctor explained that it's going to start hurting in other places on the arm because the other parts are trying to compensate."

De la Fuente's doctor, by the way, is Dr. Neal Ellatrache, a pioneer in sports medicine and arthroscopic surgery and the team doctor for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He was in the Dancing audience on Monday night. And he saw what we all saw, which was two remarkable performances and the highest scores of the night.

And when it was all over, de la Fuente was out in the hallway and greeted his 3-year-old daughter, Laura, whom he picked up with his good right arm. Fittingly, the little girl was holding a paddle with the number "10." - Deborah Starr Seibel