The Swimming Lesson

Every summer, in every country club, proud parents watch lovingly as their children splash into the water for swim lessons, struggling to outdo each other in mastering such fine skills as the jellyfish float and the art of the cannonball. Each parent smiles and proclaims their child a little fish, even the parents of the girl clinging to the wall crying, or the wide eyed boy decked out in floaties and fearing for his life. I don’t know about those kids, but I really was a little fish: destined to grow up at the Twin Lakes Country Club, falling in love with the pool, the community, and most of all swimming. The minute I became an official Twin Lakes speedy sixer, I was hooked, and swimming became one of the most important parts of my life.
Fast forward ten years and I’m a junior in high school, entering my third season of Decatur High School swimming. For some reason, I had a good feeling about this year, and at one of the meets I found out why: my relay qualified for state. As my relay team screamed, hugged, and cried, I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face, knowing that all these years of hard work would pay off once I was standing on the blocks at the state championships. As my coach ran over to congratulate us, she asked me if my arm felt okay, and I was brutally whipped back to reality. There was just one tiny little detail I forgot to mention: I had been having trouble with my left arm. Since the beginning of the season, my arm had been swelling up and turning slightly pink at practice, morphing to a somewhat frightening purple at meets. Personally coined the “dinosaur arm” by my teammates, I didn’t think too much of it at first, being too blind sighted by our successful season. We went to a few doctors, and my diagnosis ranged from dehydration (easily curable), to thoracic outlet syndrome (not so much). I continued to joke about it, never thinking I would stump multitudes of doctors and become a medical mystery at the age of seventeen. Even more naïvely, I continued to swim, hoping that whatever it was wouldn’t stop me from completing the season. Boy was I wrong.
My arm continuously got worse, and finally, when it got to resemble something like a bright magenta baseball bat, I was rushed to the emergency room. As I lay there in agony while a nervous male nurse named Dino attempted to give me what seemed like the first IV he had ever performed, the doctors came back with my test results and informed me that my left arm was filled with an extensive blood clot. The next couple of days were a whirlwind: ambulance rides, blood draws, and endless questions about my medical past down to what I had eaten for lunch last Tuesday. Although I had the privilege of enjoying an entire week of infamously excellent hospital food, I couldn’t stop thinking about the state championships, which were the very next week for my team, but now impossible for me.
Turns out I have methyltetrahydrafolate reductace, and yes, that is a real blood clotting disorder, extremely rare, but real. I was released from the hospital with low spirits and twice a day shots, not to mention the knowledge that I may never be able to swim again. The next week, I had to sit in the stands and watch my relay team swim without me. The excruciating pain of witnessing first hand all my hard work wasted was worse even than the amateur IV. I envied the alternate who took my place. I yearned to run down the bleachers, push her out of the way, and dive in. But the fat purple blob that was my arm winced with a subtle pain that reminded me I was stuck on dry land. I looked at all the fans that came to cheer my team to victory. Some looked at me puzzled, others with that pitiful ‘I feel so sorry for her,’ look that I had become accustomed to by then. I looked at my team, excited and nervous all at once. I looked at the pool, the cool glistening water. Swimming is a part of my identity, a part of my soul. I felt like my arm may as well have been amputated because I had lost a part of myself. Before I knew it a single tear came to my eye, but I hid it away quickly behind a cheer as I watched the race that should have been mine.
After the championships I was devastated, but I knew I couldn’t let some disease I couldn’t even pronounce ruin swimming for me. As the bitterness wore off, and my arm began to shrink down to baby dinosaur status, I found a way to keep swimming in my life, even if I couldn’t swim competitively. I started teaching swimming lessons to the criers, Mr. Floaties, and the occasional little fishes that I swam with when I was young. And now, years later, I am the coach of the Twin Lakes Swim Team. Coaching is more rewarding than I ever could have imagined, and I never would have gotten there without that bloated arm shaped bump in the road.
When I was first hit with the shock of this experience, it seemed to me that I was losing one of the most important parts of my life. But overcoming my injury and finding ways to keep swimming in my life not only made me incredibly proud, but it also taught me so much about my personal strength, and made me realize what I really love about swimming. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing like the feeling of adrenaline rushing through your body as you race towards the finish, but when I think about it, it’s the deeper things I got out of swimming that made me fall in love with it. It taught me discipline, leadership, and sportsmanship. It taught me that winning isn’t everything, although it is something. And most importantly, it taught me that the love between a close-knit group of friends and family is the most powerful thing in life. Now, as I teach my team how to streamline or flip turn, every once in a while a new, friendly little girl who is a natural in the water will join the team, and it makes me smile, because I know that I was once that little girl, and I only hope that she will grow to love and appreciate swimming as much as I do.