Being backstage before a performance was always hectic. There was an odd mixture of nervous energy and excitement in the air that kept you on your toes even if you only got an hour of sleep the night before due to pre-performance jitters. Waiting for news about what the stage is like and whether or not we would be adding, getting rid of, or swapping dances.

My third performance was a hectic one. By that point I had gotten a grasp of what happens backstage at a performance. Hair check, makeup check, putting on costumes or just putting on the belt, seeing if we needed to tape the bottom of our shoes or not for the stage, going over all of our dances one last time, and going over what dances we were doing and in what order, and if we were doing step-about which version we were doing, who was going with who, and which step each group would be doing. This was not one of those performances.

One of my teammates had leaned down to pick up her water bottle as we would be moving to the stage soon. Only for her to stop as she felt her tights rip. It was a large, extremely noticeable rip, starting from the back of her knee and going up all the way to her bum. And by some stroke of bad luck that also happened to be the one performance where all 20 of us happened to have forgotten our spare tights at home. We were all running around panicking trying to find something she could wear. She couldn't dance with everyone able to see her underwear, even with her wearing the shorts we wear under our dresses.

That day I learned how to quickly solve problems creatively and develop ideas at light speed. We had sprayed her tights with hair spray to keep them from further ripping then we coloured her skin black with a permanent marker one of my teammates happened to have in their bag so it would be harder to tell her tights were ripped as everything looked black. At the end of the day she had trouble taking off the tights because the hair spray had glued it to her leg and had trouble washing off the stripe of black on her skin as it was made with permanent marker, but no one in the audience knew there was a girl dancing with ripped tights.

Then St. Patrick's day rolled around. For most Canadians St. Patrick's day is only one day and a vast majority of us ignore it. But not us Irish dancers. For us St. Patrick's day is St. Patrick's week. We have back to back performances. We performed at schools, pubs, outside, and more. I never truly understood what it meant to do something no matter what until St. Patrick's day. We danced rain or shine. Sick or well.

The week before St. Patrick's day I was beyond excited and nervous. I had some unknown feeling that I couldn't name if I tried. It was like I was told that I had to do a giant test that was worth 50% of my math grade, but the test was how much fun I could have on a trampoline without getting hurt or messing up a trick. And then I became sick. Completely and totally wrecked by a bad cold. My nose ran, my throat felt like it was on fire, and I couldn't stop coughing. It hurt to swallow, or even just to breathe the cold March air. I was unable to eat normal foods because everything aggravated my throat. I drank nothing but hot herbal tea with honey and my daily dose of cough medication. During dance practice I refused to change into shorts and take off my sweater like I usually would in an attempt to sweat the virus out. I was dancing for two hours straight in yoga pants and a sweater while drinking hot tea. I lost a lot of sweat. I started sleeping with a scarf in an attempt to keep my throat warm. But I was unable to get better before St Patrick's day.

I had spent the entire week of St, Patrick's day sick. Doing back to back performances while coughing out a lung in between. Drinking nothing but my tea and trying to keep warm in between performances. Wearing contact lenses and a full face of full coverage makeup, doing touch-ups in the car as my sweat and snot whipped away my foundation and concealer. Whipping my hair with kleenex in the back of the car because our uniforms require our hair be in a half up half down style and during one of the turns it had gotten in my face covering the strands in my own snot. It was St. Patrick's day and my troupe needed me, even if I was sick. They couldn't perform with a woman down.

Well they could but it would cause them a lot of complications as they would need to teach someone to temporarily take my spot and I was not about to put them through that. The only way I was going to let my team down was if I was stuck in a hospital bed with both my legs broken. And even then I would have called or texted them so they would have a head's up.

That week I learned a lot about performing from the senior performers. I discovered a lot through my own experiences. But I learned nothing more important than how effective determination was.

Because when you're sick as a dog, and your feet with an extra bone in each foot are acting up hurting with a burning passion and swollen, and you smile through it all. When you can smile through the pain and continue to correctly dance your steps and stay in line with your teammates. When you can smile even when you can't breathe through your nose. When you can smile even when your sweat is causing makeup to drip into your eyes which are already irritated by the contact lenses in them. When you can smile even though you feel like you might vomit or collapse if you stop dancing. When you can smile and keep dancing through all of that, you know you can do anything. When you can trick the audience into thinking you're having the time of your life on stage, stay on time with the music and be in perfect sync with your teammates, when you can ignore everything that is selfishly you and focus past it to do something to make someone else smile if only for a moment or to make it a little easier on someone else during a stressful time you know you are being the best you you can be.

That week I learnt new ways to communicate with my teammates because I was having trouble talking. I learnt when a look meant move forward and which look meant to move backwards. I learnt which disappointed glare meant turn out your feet and which look of disappointment said "straighten your arms you look like a chicken". I learnt about my personal values through the choices I made to dance through everything telling me to not to. I learnt personal strengths and abilities through a kind of perseverance I didn't know I could call forward until I did. I learnt self-determination through pure stubbornness. I learnt self-regulation through not snapping at my teammates despite how irritable I was from lack of sleep, through controlling my physical instincts to bend over to cough during the performance and doing my best to hold it in till I was backstage. I learnt well-being as I had done a lot of research trying to find ways to get better faster so I would get better before St. Patrick's day, evidently that did not work but the tips have proven to be helpful over the years. I learnt contributing to the community as throughout St Patrick's day we performed at multiple seniors' homes in which I and the rest of the team were able to make the seniors' day funner; during any time we had to mingle with the seniors I kept my distance but would smile and return greetings letting them know that I was keeping my distance as I did not wish to make them sick.

Doing back to back shows for a week while sick was not fun. The performances were fun but the cold took away from that. I had planned to take better care of myself the next year, especially close to St. Patrick's day, so I wouldn't have to do that again. Little did I know that that was the start of some strange immune system tradition of my body always getting a cold during that one week of March. Without fail, every year since then.