- January 27th, 2007, 11:19 am
#56389
Check this out from the Roanoke fishwrap:
Athlete once thought paralyzed didn't sink, but now swimshttp://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/101900
After an accident paralyzed Brittany Bays, no one thought she would leave a wheelchair; now she is competing again.
By Doug Doughty
981-3129
Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times
Brittany Bays (above) swims in a recent meet, and (below) shares a laugh with her grandmother, Ester Bowyer. Bays, a senior at Staunton River High School, was once paralyzed from the waist down after a sledding accident three years ago.
BEDFORD -- Nobody ever told Brittany Bays that she would never walk again.
Maybe that's why, three years after a sledding accident that left her paralyzed from the waist down, Brittany is competing as a senior for the Staunton River High School girls' swim team.
Brittany, 17, swam the anchor leg on the Eagles' opening relay Thursday night against Jefferson Forest High School, then turned around five minutes later and swam the 200-yard freestyle. Most of the time, she swims the 500-yard freestyle, the longest and most grueling event contested at the high school level.
Boys and girls who have been swimming for years have been known to beg off the 500.
"A lot of kids don't have the guts that Brittany does," Staunton River coach Nikki Rose said. "I had no doubt in my mind that she would be able to complete it."
Oh, yes, she's walking now, too, although that was not a foregone conclusion after she went sledding with her older brother, Brad, on a snowy January day in 2004.
The siblings crested a hill close to their Bedford County home and, while Brittany never lost consciousness, what happened next remains a blur. She may have smacked into a rock, but nobody is sure.
"There wasn't a bruise on her body," her mother, Joy, said.
All Brittany knew was, she couldn't feel anything. Her older brother realized he shouldn't move her and immediately called 911 for help.
She was transported by ambulance to Body Camp Elementary School, the only place where a helicopter could land, then airlifted to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, where her injuries were judged too severe to treat locally.
From there, it was another helicopter flight to the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville.
"I was pretty calm," said Brittany, heavily sedated by that point. "I mostly remember how noisy it was. It was really, really loud. There were two people up front, and I knew they were talking about me, but I couldn't hear what they were saying."
She wouldn't have wanted to know.
"They had already told us she would probably always be in a wheelchair," Joy Bays said. "Chances were, the way [her spine] was crushed, she would get very little feeling. If she got feeling back, she would not be able to walk."
Brittany had been an active child, as well as a promising athlete who played on the high school junior-varsity girls' basketball and softball teams as an eighth-grader.
"We've got a pretty good girls' [basketball] team now," said athletic director Ricky Falls, whose daughter had played with Brittany, "but sometimes I look out on the floor and wonder, 'How good would we be if Brittany were still in the mix?' She was a starter on the JV team as a ninth-grader."
Brittany isn't about to resume her basketball or softball careers. The calf muscles in her legs never regenerated, which causes her to walk flat-footed because she can't push off the ground.
UVa neurosurgeon Dr. Chris Shaffrey went into a bone bank to replace Brittany's crushed vertebra, and stabilized another fractured vertebra with eight screws, two rods and a metal plate.
"That will be in there forever," she said.
Shaffrey said he remembers Brittany's case distinctly because of the freak nature of the accident.
"You could understand it if somebody falls off a building or is in a terrible car wreck and has that sort of injury," he said. "I've got four kids of my own, and you always wonder what you should let them do or not do. I don't think a parent has much concern over letting the kids go sledding."
The original goal in therapy was to build up Brittany's upper body to help her maneuver in a wheelchair.
"Little by little, I started to get some feeling back," she said. "I remember my mom saying one day that she had seen my sheet move and that it was the happiest she'd ever been."
As she recounted that moment, Brittany wiped a tear from her eye.
"It's the first time she's really talked about it," her mother said.
By the middle of February 2004, Brittany was back home in Bedford County, eventually finishing the semester in a wheelchair. Counting time spent at the Kluge Children's Rehabilitation Center in Charlottesville and the work she did at home, Brittany technically did not miss a day of class.
The next step was a walker that was subsequently discarded, but she stills experiences fatigue. During an interview, she pulled up a pants leg to show the braces she wears for a long day of walking the halls at Staunton River or for her job as a hostess at Jerry's Family Restaurant in Vinton.
In a 212-year rehabilitation period that is winding down, Brittany swam in the pool at Friendship Retirement Community, off Hershberger Road in Roanoke. She had learned to swim at her family's pool but had never been on a team before the idea was pitched to her this year by government teacher Lori Gibson, an assistant swim coach.
"I thought about it last year," Brittany said, "but I talked myself out of it."
In her first attempt at the 500 freestyle, Brittany was timed in nine minutes, 57 seconds, and has since lowered that to 8:30. She has swum only freestyle but could do the other strokes.
"The first week of practice, I was concerned about what restrictions she might have physically and whether there was anything that was a medical 'no,' " Rose said.
On the team she coached last year in Ohio, Rose had a girl with spina bifida who had to be taken directly from her wheelchair and placed into the water.
The only concession Brittany makes is on her racing dive. She squats and holds onto the sides of the block until it is time to dive, at which point she raises up and smoothly sails into the water. Her flip turns Thursday could have been in a textbook.
"There's nothing in the pool that she can't physically do," said Rose, who did note that Brittany passes up the running and jumping that is part of the Eagles' dry-land training. "I wish we'd had her a year or two ago. Right now, she's just finally understanding the basics of the strokes."
Brittany's athletic commitments won't end with the swim season. She will keep the scorebook for the Staunton River baseball team this spring for the third straight season; then, it's off to one of the three colleges she's considering: Liberty University, Lynchburg College and Virginia Commonwealth University. She has a 3.4 grade-point average.
"I'll definitely keep up swimming," said Brittany, who also was the Staunton River homecoming queen. "I don't know if it will be competitively, but my accident has helped me realize life isn't all about sports, like it was before.
"I know people who aren't worried about grades because they say, 'Oh, I can make it on sports,' but you never know when something might happen."
- By ECC29
- By Purple Haize
- By LU Armchair coach