A spontaneous scare
|
| Ohio senior Paul Swanson is recovering from spontaneous pneumothorax, a random condition found in tall, slender, young people without a history of lung disease. He has twice been affected, causing a lung to collapse. (BCR photo/Kevin Hieronymus) |
OHIO — Paul Swanson’s eyes fluttered open. Before him the precise chaos of the emergency room swirled. Doctors hovered over him, poking here, prodding there. Nurses scurried after one necessity or another.
To wake up was a blessing, even if it seemed to the teenager from quiet, quaint Ohio, that he had stirred from utter black into a terrifying nightmare.
At that moment he didn’t know it, but for 30 seconds before waking up on that morning in September, his young body stalled and his healthy heart stopped beating.
It still doesn’t seem real or possible to Swanson and his family, but it is a reality they now confront on a daily basis with a never-ending list of what-ifs.
What if the Swansons hadn’t gone as quickly to the hospital?
What if Paul had played football this fall? Would they have stayed home, thinking he was just feeling normal pain from a game or practice?
What if putting off surgery so that he can play one last basketball season is a mistake?
What if he has another bad attack?
What if?
Six hours earlier, Paul curled up in bed when he awoke to his chest tightening like a rope in a tug-of-war contest. He looked over to the clock that read 4 a.m., trying to decide if he should wake his parents or wait to see if the pain would pass.
It didn’t. To make matters worse, his lungs burned as if on fire, trying to absorb every molecule of oxygen they could.
He needed help.
“He comes in and says his chest really hurts and he can’t catch his breath, and you think that sounds like a heart attack,” said Paul’s mother, Melissa Swanson. “But that can’t be — he’s too young. Then we thought maybe he was coming down with the flu or something.”
It wasn’t the flu, and Paul’s condition wasn’t improving. Into the car and down Route 26, the same road Paul drove to football practice everyday the year before, to Perry Memorial Hospital in Princeton.
The culprit causing Paul’s problems is hard for anyone outside of the medical community to understand. A bleb (a small air blister) formed on the outside of his left lung and burst. Air then entered the space between his ribcage and lung. This pressure caused his lung to collapse and eventually his heart to stop.
“It was so obvious when they brought out the X-ray,” Paul’s father, Ed Swanson, said. “One side was big and full and normal. The other side there was all black and empty. It was scary to see that.”
Once air was drained from outside Paul’s lung, it re-expanded and he was back to normal.
While relieving the problem turned out not to be that big of a problem, the Swansons were left wondering why and how this happened.
The medical answers are fairly generic. Spontaneous pneumothorax lives up to the first part of its name. It is a random condition found in tall, slender, young people without a history of lung disease.
At 6 feet, 3 inches tall, 190 pounds and a senior in high school, Paul hit every criterion.
“There’s no way to know when it’s going to happen,” Paul said. “You don’t have to be doing anything physical. Heck, all I was doing the first time was sleeping. It just happens and once it happens it’s likely to happen again.”
It did happen again. This time in November, just as the leaves fell and basketballs started bouncing off hardwood.
Paul was getting ready for a shower when the now familiar pain swept through his chest.
“That time wasn’t such a big deal,” Paul said. “I knew the pain and we went to the hospital and had it taken care of. It wasn’t nearly as bad that time.”
The timing was the bad part this time. The doctor told Paul that he could not practice basketball for a few weeks after the incident. This set back goals Paul had for his final high school season.
Last year, Paul was nearly a one-man show for the Ohio Bulldogs, averaging 14.4 points and 10.8 rebounds a game. At the beginning of this school year, Paul found out he might have a chance to accomplish more than gaudy numbers.
Ohio formed a cooperative with LaMoille, which returned a majority of the players from a team that won the Class 1A Polo Regional last season. The Lions were ranked sixth in 1A preseason rankings.
The addition of Swanson and his Ohio teammates was likely to make them better. Swanson started wondering if he could be a part of a long postseason run.
“The frustrating part was that during those first couple weeks we were really going to work hard on just getting used to playing with each other,” Swanson said. “Then I was out and could only watch. Now it’s midway through the season and I have had like two or three practices and I am out there trying to play.”
Like the air in Paul’s left lung, some of the air has left the Lions’ balloon. Paul’s health issue, mixed with a team trying to come together during a hectic first-half schedule, has left the Lions with four wins and seven losses in their first 11 games.
There were 20 beats left on the clock in the third-place game at the Newman Christmas Classic against Woodland. The Lions were trying to make a frantic comeback from five points down.
A shot goes up and Swanson is intertwined with two Woodland players. During the play, Swans-on and both opponents crashed to the floor.
Moments later, Swanson was back to his feet, jogging down the court.
“It doesn’t bother me at all when I am doing things,” he said. “There’s no pain or anything. I am normal. But I am much more aware of my body than I was ever before. I try not to think about it or worry about it, but that’s not easy to do.”
Swanson saw his first significant playing time against Ashton-Franklin Center in the first round at Newman on Dec. 26. Before that, Swanson made brief appearances in a few games leading up to the tournament.
“The doctor cleared him to go, so we’re not worried at all about throwing him out there,” LaMoille/Ohio coach Terry Nelson said. “At this point it’s just about conditioning. We see him start to go up and down the court slower and we give him a break. We know what Paul can do and once he gets to 100 percent, he’ll be a force again.”
Swanson must play the rest of the season with two strikes against him and no real bat to fend off pitches. There’s little he can do to prevent another episode until his planned postseason surgery. If one occurs, his senior season is over.
Swanson and his parents made the decision to put off the surgery that should permanently correct the situation so that he could play this season. The Swansons — trying to balance the what-ifs of life and the what-ifs of an athlete — hope they made the right decision. Only time will tell.
