After life-altering surgery, Colleen Driscoll back in the game

Colleen Driscoll is the younger sister of Quinn Driscoll, an athlete who died in 2009 from an undiagnosed heart condition.

In the wake of that tragedy came the Quinn Driscoll Foundation, dedicated to the education and testing/screening of young people for issues surrounding Sudden Cardiac Arrest. The foundation also has donated automated external defibrillators throughout the community, AEDs that have saved lives.

“The foundation is something the whole family is involved with,” said Scott Driscoll, Colleen’s dad.

“I think about him every day,” Colleen said.

Every once in a while, Colleen sees one of Quinn’s favorite animals while pitching at the Vancouver Girls Softball Association complex next to Salmon Creek.

“When I see a bald eagle, I know he’s there,” she said.

Colleen Driscoll said goodbye.

To her teammates. To her sport. In person. And on social media.

No athlete should ever have to walk away from the game too early. Yet Driscoll, a top-notch pitcher, was having to forgo her senior softball season at Mountain View.

The medical professionals told her that her life-altering back surgery last August would be followed by a 12-month recovery.

That was tough enough. Then Driscoll endured two weeks of post-operative complications in the hospital. An infection. Spinal headaches. Almost too much to bear. Almost.

“I didn’t want to give up, though,” Driscoll said. “I knew there was so much more that I wanted to accomplish. There were low points at the hospital but I had to keep pushing, knowing it would get better.”

Her parents noticed her slouching. They figured it was poor posture.

Sit up straight, they said.

“I am,” she replied.

No you’re not, they said.

“Yes I am,” she said.

That was followed by an appointment with her physician and the diagnosis.

“They got off my back,” Colleen says of her parents’ nagging.

At that point, surgery would only be a last option. Driscoll was hoping it would come later in life, if at all.

A normal body’s curvature is about 30 degrees, said Colleen’s father, Scott Driscoll. Colleen’s spine was at 80 percent last spring when her doctor broke the news that surgery was, indeed, necessary.

“He made it sound like softball was something I wouldn’t be able to do again,” she said.

“I cried the whole way home, thinking of all the stuff I could be missing out on, all the unknowns,” she recalled. “I was in shock. … It was like a bomb dropped.”

The surgery, and its aftermath, took an emotional toll, too. Scott Driscoll said doctors perform 250 to 300 scoliosis surgeries for every one associated with Scheuermann’s disease. It is that rare. There is a danger associated with any back surgery.

“Everything is OK, but …”

Those were the words that greeted Scott and Kelly Driscoll regarding their daughter after the surgery. Doctors were not receiving a “signal” from Colleen’s right side.

“Excuse me? What does that mean?” Scott asked.

“It literally means we could have done damage to the spinal cord,” he heard.

It took hours of waiting to learn that there was no paralysis.

The ordeal, however, was just beginning.

A nicked dura mater — the membrane that surrounds the spinal cord — caused leaking of fluid, which built pressure in the brain, creating excruciating spinal headaches. Colleen had to lie completely flat for 36 hours for the dura mater to heal — “which is really hard after back surgery,” she said.

From bad to worse, Driscoll then developed clostridium difficile colitis, an infection that can kill. She could not keep any food in her system. Highly infectious, she was quarantined, as well. In what should have been a three- or four-day stay in the hospital turned into a two-week struggle.

She said the worst night was when her IV failed. Her veins, weakened from all the stress, made it difficult, and painful, for a simple fix.

That was the night she wanted to give up. That was the night she could not foresee herself being normal again. This surgery was supposed to take away pain, to correct the curvature, to make things better. At that point, she could not see any of the benefits.

“I was done. I was at the point I could have given up. I lost everything,” Driscoll said.

Even after being released from the hospital, it was difficult to imagine becoming an athlete again.

“I wasn’t eating. I had lost all my muscle mass,” Driscoll said. “Going upstairs and taking a shower felt like I ran a marathon. I was exhausted.”

She could not bend, twist, or lift anything the first six weeks. She felt stiff. It was difficult concentrating when school resumed in September.

Slowly, she saw improvement.

She was given the go-ahead to try physical therapy after six weeks.

“I kind of made it my sport,” Driscoll said. “I made it my priority. Even if I couldn’t play high school softball, I wanted to be back in shape. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed seeing the progress.”

Still, it was not until February when softball began to look like a possibility. Those three to four days a week of physical therapy worked. She was ahead of schedule, impressing her doctor along the way.

Today, there are few restrictions that affect her life.

“I can’t play football. I can’t play ice hockey,” she said with a smile. “I can’t sky dive or bungee jump.”

OK, then.

“If you ride a horse, just don’t fall off.”

Barely missed a step

Mandy Busby took over the head coaching duties this season at Mountain View. The team graduated seven seniors from that state tournament squad from a year ago, and then was losing its pitcher. Or so she thought.

Her first year as a head coach, Busby does not want to think about what the season would have been without Driscoll.

“She is a leader by example,” Busby said. “Work ethic and drive, she’s the whole package.”

Still, expectations were low at first. Take it slow. Maybe pitch every once in a while.

That plan did not last. Driscoll pitches pretty much every game for the Thunder.

“What are you doing here?” senior Brittanee Sexton remembers saying when she first noticed Driscoll in comeback mode. “She was busting it out like she didn’t miss a day.”

Others at school have asked Sexton who their pitcher is this season. Colleen Driscoll, she tells them.

“She’s back,” Sexton proclaimed. “Everybody was, ‘What?’ Everybody was like, ‘Whoa!'”

For the first time in years, Driscoll is pain free. Being back on the softball field, she is happy, too.

“I kind of just wanted to do it to see if I could,” Driscoll said.

Being a motivation to others is just a bonus.

“I just hope to give them something,” Driscoll said of her teammates. “I’m trying to be a leader, someone to look up to.”

Their leader said goodbye after last season. In August, quarantined in a hospital room, almost to the breaking point, softball seemed long gone.

Now just look at Colleen Driscoll, in the pitcher’s circle, wearing her favorite uniform.

Mountain View lost its first game of the season back in March, but Driscoll won that day on Twitter:

“Rough start to the season but beyond blessed that only 7 months post opt I’m able to be on the field playing and representing Mt. View.”

There were two hearts placed at the end of that tweet, in Thunder blue and green.