What it Was is Not What it is Now...

[Winterlight]

It sounds like she needs professional help.  This does not like something she's going to fix by telling her (in a polite way) that she needs to get over it.  I think it's beyond etiquette at this point.

Agreeed, especially with the drinking issue.

[delabela]

The next time she invites you somewhere..."Lucy, before I take you up on your offer, I want to ask you something.  Is this friends getting together for lunch or Lucy laments her health problems?  I want to support you, of course, but I feel like I am not "Barensmom" but "person to complain how I can't dance to".   I am not sure you are aware, but that is all you talk about when we are together. I know that this affects your life very much, but when I bring up other activities or ideas, you don't want to hear them.  So if we can do some new activities together I would like to meet up very much, but if it is talking about Dancing I am going to suggest instead that you talk to a therapist because clearly after 2 years this is still bothering you very much."

I would omit the bolded - to me, that is a bit mean.  The rest is good. 

[fountainsoflettuce]

Well, in Arrested Development, Lucille did to go a clinic which remedied her vertigo.

Perhap you should keep asking your friend, "What are you going to do about it?" everytime she starts.  And to stop inviting her to things if you are really tired of it.  If she keeps on, you may need stiff your spine, give her some "tough love" and address the issue directly.

[rashea]

I've probably been that person at times. I lost springboard diving, and eventually my ability to walk for a long time  in a slow and relentless process that for ages had doctors befuddled or just wrong. It was hell. And even now, though I've largely regained the ability to walk, it still hurts. It still hurts to have lost that way of expressing myself. And I suspect that's what's really missing for her as well.

I encourage you to approach her gently and tell her that you're concerned. That it's entirely normal to grieve something like this, but that she doesn't seem to be moving on, and that it might be worth talking to a professional for a little while to get some help with this.

I also support putting time limits on how long she can talk about it. Maybe it's just 5 minutes of a get together.

The other thing I'll point out that may not be clear, is that she may not have something else she is proud of to talk about. When I was in college, fresh off an injury, I didn't always have a lot going on. I had school, but my issues with my diff eq prof didn't tend to be interesting for long. I could tell you in detail about the plans for my next surgery, but it wasn't great dinner table conversation. I could tell you about how hellish it was trying to adjust to not walking, and later to using a wheelchair on an incredibly inaccessible campus. In short, for years, while I had positive moments to talk about, in all honesty just coping took a large part of my time and energy. And people didn't want to hear that stuff. It left me with very little to talk about sometimes (eta) which left me telling stories about my past to try and sound interesting, and less depressing.

[mmswm]

I can sympathize with Lucy.  It took me a long time to snap out of the depression that I got into after a hiking accident ended my music career.  Even now, so many years later something can happen to snap me back into it.  I went through a phase just a year ago when I reconnected with an old studio mate, a person who everybody said was my only real competition, and realized that he's the principal of our instrument in a major, world class orchestra and teaching at a hugely respected conservatory.  That could have been me.  *sigh*.  It's tough to loose your dreams.

That said, there's a ton of people out there who have lost their dreams: Me, Rashea, and untold thousands of athletes and artists.  Sometimes we're smart enough to seek therapy on our own.  Other times we need a good friend to smack us back into the present.  Thankfully I had a good friend who was kind enough, but honest enough to push me in the right direction.

I also agree with Rashea about not having anything else to be proud of.  At least that's what she might think.  Her whole life has been defined by her dance, so she's probably having trouble coming up with anything to talk about that's interesting.