Rheum After 5: Dr. Brittany Bettendorf, Figure Skater

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.