Vineland’s Emma Hood willing to sacrifice her rib to continue swimming career

By DAVE O’SULLIVAN Publisher When Emma Hood was a child, her mother, Amy, said nurses had to hold the thrashing youngster down just to give her a simple shot. Such was her fear of needles. Imagine the trepidation Emma, a 16-year-old sophomore at Vineland High School, felt in early December when doctors told her they would have to remove one of her ribs. Emma had spent the better part of a year preparing for a breakout sophomore season, training with legendary Vineland swim instructor and former Fighting Clan coach John Casadia all summer to improve enough to make the Cape-Atlantic League Championships and maybe even the state individual tournament. Vineland has a storied tradition in girls swimming, and Emma was consumed with becoming a part of that legacy, sometimes working out two or three times a day. Emma Hood, a sophomore at Vineland High School, had to have one of her upper ribs removed in December after it was discovered she suffered from thoracic outlet syndrome. (Glory Days Magazine photos/Dave O’Sullivan) Her visions of bursting onto the Cape-Atlantic League swim scene in her second season were dashed in early December, however. One day, her right arm swelled up and turned purple, shocking teammates and coaches. Her doctor advised her to go to the hospital in Vineland, yet nothing out of the ordinary was found after an ultrasound. At the next practice, Emma’s arm swelled again and her mother took her to Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Del. “One day my arm swelled up to twice its size and started changing colors,” Emma said. “I felt my arm getting stiff, then when I got out of the pool someone said, ‘Emma, your arm is twice its size and purple!’ I didn’t even look at it until someone said something. I was like, ‘what the heck is wrong with me?’ I had no idea what was going on.” “The first day that her arm started acting up she swam through it, then after she got out of the pool we were like, ‘Emma, your arm is really swollen!’ teammate Olivia Messore said. “She said, ‘it will go down.’ She didn’t want to go to the hospital but eventually she did. She was really upset that she couldn’t swim. Whenever we had a meet it was really hard for her and she would get very emotional because she loves swimming. Swimming is her whole life.” Emma was told she had thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS), which basically is pressure on a bundle of nerves and veins under the collarbone that cuts off circulation to the arm. She was told she could swim in one meet, but that if something happened she should stop immediately. She was having pain during a meet against Oakcrest and Vineland coach Mike Schneider pulled her from the lineup. Two days later, while taking notes in biology class, her arm began to swell again and Emma went in for emergency surgery at duPont. “I was like, ‘What is going on?’ This was my first surgery, first time I had to sleep at a hospital. I’ve always been afraid of needles so it was a big change,” Emma said. “I felt fine at first (after surgery). It just felt like an empty area near my shoulder. I couldn’t move my arm much, but I was OK.” For Schneider, the news was devastating. Not only was he was thinking an integral performer in his lineup was going to miss the entire season, but, more importantly, he had one of his swimmers going under the knife and was concerned about her health. “She was primed to have a really big season and for this to happen we felt really bad for her,” Schneider said. “When they told me they were going to have to remove her rib I figured she was done for the season. We were hopeful, but in my gut I was preparing for the rest of the season as if she wasn’t going to be able to swim.” Life-changing moment Emma said the most difficult part of the whole ordeal was the moment she was wheeled back into surgery. “I almost started to cry. They rolled me back, my parents walked back and said goodbye and I was like, ‘no, please don’t leave me!'” Emma said. “I was so scared. But (the doctors) started talking to me about swimming, which calmed me down, and then I don’t remember anything after that.” Hood has a 4-inch scar under her right arm, where doctors had to go in to remove one of her ribs. She came back from the surgery in just five weeks and earned a berth in the Cape-Atlantic League championships. “I have a history of stroke, so circulation always sits in the back of my head. When she told me her arm was swollen my initial reaction was, ‘did you get hit? Did you get kicked?’ and she said no, it just swelled up and turned blue,” Amy Hood said. “Her whole arm would swell when it would happen, from shoulder to fingertips, and turn purple. We went to (duPont) ER and they found that her vein was completely impinged where the clavicle and rib meet. “I was floored. The first visit with the cardiovascular surgeon they said her rib is going to have to come out. We were like, ‘what? seriously?’ Emma’s first reaction was can it wait until March because she wanted to swim this season. (The doctor) tried to give her a little leeway to see if she could work through it, but we ended up having to go to the hospital and go through emergency surgery.” Emma said her parents were, naturally, very concerned about the procedure, particularly her normally stoic father, Kevin. “My dad, I never see him get nervous. But he was nervous,” Emma said. “He gets very cautious and very upset,” Amy said of her husband. “She can do no wrong at this point. I don’t think he has raised his voice to her since this happened. I know I have. I think he just kind of switched to automatic. It was really scary.” The surgery wasn’t without its complications. There were blood clots in the veins that were being impeded by the TOS, and doctors had to run a catheter all the way up from her thigh to try to balloon the veins enough to remove the blood clots. That catheterization ended up being a nearly five-hour procedure. On top of that, Amy and Kevin found out that Emma was suffering from a blood disorder. “All this thing with her rib being removed isn’t even the biggest problem. We found out she has a blood disorder that we would have never known about. It turns out (getting her rib removed) was a good thing because now she is on all the right medication,” Amy said. “It’s been a roller coaster ride.” Her teammates were, naturally, very concerned. “She told us that she was probably going to have to get surgery but that she would be OK, so I wasn’t too worried. But getting surgery is a big deal,” Messore said. “I was thinking, ‘this is crazy.’ It was crazy to hear they were going to take out one of her ribs. A rib? That seems like such a big thing. It’s a scary thing, but she didn’t make a big deal out of it.” Fast recovery time Emma’s shy smile belies her fierce competitiveness. She devours her schoolwork, receiving outstanding grades, and whatever time is not spent on her education she is doing whatever she can to become a better swimmer. “I wanted to know what was wrong with me, but I really just wanted to get back in the water. That’s what was going through my mind,” Emma said. “It was challenging for me more mentally than physically. Taking me away from the pool was like taking me away from my second home. As soon as we got back from the hospital I asked my mom if we could go visit swim practice.” “She’s a little ball of fire. You can certainly see how driven she is. We would be hav
ing team meetings and you could see her fighting back tears because she wasn’t able to do the work she wanted to do,” Schneider said. “I think her spirits were better once they had a solution and she knew what she was going to have to do. The way that she performed in the three weeks we had her (to start the season) really speaks volumes about the work she did from May until November. She put in more work than she’s ever put in before, and that paid off because she was able to get back to where she was so quickly.” Emma didn’t waste any time once she returned in late January. In her just her second meet back she qualified for the Cape-Atlantic League Championships. She didn’t win her heat at CALs, but Schneider said she swam surprisingly well. Then, earlier this month, she posted her best time ever in the 100 butterfly during Vineland’s playoff loss to Cherokee. “Of course, she was mad because she didn’t win her heat (at CALs). But I was telling her ‘you’re almost as fast as you were at this time last year … and you’re missing a rib! Stop being so mad,'” Schneider said. “And, believe it or not, when we swam against Cherokee (in the playoffs) she swam her lifetime best time in the 100 butterfly. It’s been a really great comeback and something that’s been good to see.” Mental hurdles The toughest part for many athletes coming back from injury is the mental aspect. Top athletes are programmed to go 100 percent full speed all the time, and when they can’t frustration can build quickly. “Every night and all day I would think about when I could get back in the water. Swimming is my life, and it has been since I was 3 years old,” Emma said. “You can’t take something that you have for granted. As I sat on the pool deck I would hear teammates complain about practice and I would say, ‘would you rather be me sitting on the side?'” Schneider said it was easy to see the effect not being able to swim was having on Emma, but he kept telling her to be patient, that she would be back before she knew it. “How many kids cry when they miss swim practice? She’s the first one I’ve seen. Swim practice is not fun. It’s really hard and kids enjoy having a break from that once in a while, and here you have a kid who is miserable because she can’t swim,” Schneider said. Said her mother, “I think if she knew it wasn’t serious she would just swim right through it. She’ll swim through anything. This was devastating for her because she came into this season really ready to swim and show what she could do. My heart broke when we got all this news. It took me a while to realize how serious all this was.” But Amy said that she believes going through such a tough ordeal as a 16-year-old has really helped her daughter mature and learn a valuable lesson that things don’t always come easily, even for outstanding athletes. “I think because she has grown so much and matured as an athlete and is so determined in her sport … that helped her through this. She just got in the mindset that this is just temporary and you can’t just quit because it’s difficult,” Amy said. “There were times when she was low. I think it’s been more of an emotional journey than a physical one. I told her, ‘five weeks ago you were under the knife having a rib ripped out and now you are back racing. You need to be proud of yourself and happy with whatever you see on that board.’ I hope she is happy that she is back in the pool.” Schneider, Emma and the rest of the Fighting Clan swim community are hoping the only tears shed from now on are tears of joy, as the little ball of fire takes aim at what is sure to be a bright future. Contact Dave O’Sullivan: sully@acglorydays.com; on Twitter @GDsullysays [adsense]