Mystery energy loss

A year ago, Takayoshi, then a sophomore at Evergreen, was dragging.

“I did track, and I slept. It was everything I could do to be able to make it to practice, then go home and sleep by 7 o’clock. I missed more class than I should have because I was always so tired,” she said. “It was real frustrating. The people around me always seemed to have energy, and I didn’t. It was just weird.”

At first, Sarah, and her parents, Adam and Debbie, thought nothing of it. Sarah called it the “sleepy teen” phase. The phase, however, never came to an end, and her symptoms were getting worse.

Sleeping in, despite going to bed early. Lack of focus. Dozing off at school.

Adrenaline took over on the track. She could complete the 100, but she would hit a wall in the 200.

“Every race, I just wanted to quit the last 20 yards,” Sarah said.

That, in itself, bothered her. There is no quit in her.

She soldiered through the rest of the season, winning a state championship with her teammates on the 400-relay team. She completed her sophomore year, then said goodbye to Evergreen, wondering what life would be like at Union, the new school that would open in the fall.

The summer turned out to be a waste, at least for someone accustomed to activity. 

Friends would call. “Let’s go out, Sarah,” they might say. “Sorry,” was the answer. “Too tired. Gonna stay home.”

In retrospect, Debbie Takayoshi said, she should have figured it out sooner.

“I should have known because she’s a very social kid,” Sarah’s mom said. “Maybe it was a little denial. Maybe it was her being a kid and being tired.”

They would soon find out that Sarah’s heart was “enlarged, elongated, and leaking significantly,” Debbie said.

Leaking blood.

Bicuspid aortic valve

The Takayoshis had known for years that this was coming, eventually. Sarah was born with a bicuspid aortic valve, the most common of congenital heart defects.

A normal aortic valve, according to the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, has three leaflets, or cusps, that move flexibly and control the flow of blood into the aorta. People born with BAV have two leaflets. Over time, a bicuspid valve may lose its ability to open widely, close properly, or both.

For Sarah, it did not close properly, allowing the blood to flow backward.

“Her heart was having to work so hard to keep her going, she was exhausted all the time,” Debbie said.

A barrage of memories came crashing down on Adam and Debbie. 

“The doctor was gloom and doom,” Debbie said, referring to the initial diagnosis, when Sarah was a baby.

She can still hear the words: “This child is never going to be normal.”

The family got a second opinion and learned Sarah could lead a normal life, with regular monitoring. Eventually — that word again — Sarah would need surgery to correct the problem.

After years of medical breakthroughs, after getting over that gloom and doom, mom and dad figured Sarah would be well into her 20s by the time of the surgery.

So it came as a shock when a regular visit on a Friday in August turned into a consultation with the surgeon the following Monday. The doctor said the surgery could be done that week or in December.

Sarah showed no fear.

In fact, in many ways, she was elated.

“I would have gone in that day if I could have,” Sarah said. “I was so excited because I was finally going to get back to normal. I was so happy to have an explanation.”

Not so fast, though.

“As a parent, it was always in the future,” Debbie said. “This isn’t supposed to happen yet. Two days to process all this? Can’t we wait? Sarah was like, ‘Let’s go. Can we do it today?’ The doctor said they needed 24 hours to thaw a valve.”

Now that is something a typical teenager does not need to worry about — a valve from a cadaver having to thaw before a life-saving surgery can be performed.

Two days later, Sarah was on the surgeon’s table, waiting for the start of another race.

Surgery, recovery

By having the surgery in August, there was a chance she could make it to track season in the spring.

Details of the Ross Procedure can be found at various medical Web sites, with graphics and words describing all the intricacies. While that might have helped Sarah and her parents wrap their brains around the surgery, it could not prepare them for the emotions, the pain.

“That day of the surgery was probably the worst day you could have as a parent,” Adam Takayoshi said.

For her part, Sarah said it wasn’t too bad, crediting the medicine. But she hated the tubes, inserted into her abdomen to drain fluid from her lungs. 

“Every time I breathed, I could feel it,” she said. “They were in my skin.”

Family — she also has a younger brother, Michael, and two younger sisters, Meghan and Emily — and friends lifted her spirits that week in the hospital.

She even got a visit from two sets of track coaches, her former coaches from Evergreen and her future coaches from Union. It meant a lot to the Takayoshis because at the time, Sarah was in between schools, a former Plainsman and not yet a Titan. 

Sarah wanted to make it back for them, all of them, as much as for herself.

Those first few days in recovery, though, created some doubt.

“Before my surgery, I figured I was going to be perfect for the season. After my surgery, I was wondering if I was going to be able to run this year,” she said. “In my head, I was going to use this year as a training year to get back for my senior year.”

Something inside her clicked. Sarah participated in conditioning drills in the winter. She was way behind her peers, but she kept at it, kept showing signs of improvement.

“I have a competitive side,” Sarah said. “I didn’t want to use it as an excuse not to do well.”

Just a few people knew that in February, she competed at an indoor college meet, open for high school athletes as well, in Idaho. She wanted to get a feel for how she was doing. Her times were slower than she would have liked, but she was back.

That led to more work, in preparation for Union’s inaugural season.

“I don’t think my coaches expected anything less from me,” Sarah said. “Every practice was to get me better. They pushed me as far as I could go that day. They always got the best out of me.”

The coaches had an exceptionally motivated athlete to work with, too.

“Being able to start a program with a kid like that is phenomenal,” Union coach Mike Burdick said. “I’m just really happy she is healthy.”

The comeback

Debbie knows she is the mom, knows she is going to come across as just a proud parent, but she can’t help herself. She said she would like to scream from a mountaintop.

“The strength and determination she has shown throughout this has been amazing,” Debbie said. “They said the surgery would be eight to 10 hours; it took six  and a half. She didn’t need a blood transfusion. She wasn’t supposed to go to school the first day, and she was there the first day. We didn’t think we’d be able to make it to homecoming. Not only was she there, she was the homecoming queen.”

There were times when Sarah wanted to stop pushing herself, though. Even today, she is not 100 percent. Oh, her heart is fine, but the body remains in recovery from such an invasive medical procedure.

“There are still days when my chest hurts because the muscles were moved around so much,” she said.

In that battle against time, while fighting off the effects of the surgery, Sarah would use anything she could find as a source of motivation.

During rough spots in training, for example, she would often think of her relay teammates from last year. Candace Missouri and Lauren Visoria graduated from high school, and Aimee Teuscher is a senior at Evergreen this year. But they all still talk, all share the memory of that state championship. In Sarah’s mind, they remain teammates.

“Whenever I felt I couldn’t do it anymore, I thought of my team last year,” she said. “If I couldn’t do it for myself, I would do it for those girls.”

Now she is doing her best for her new teammates. Those slower times in that meet in Idaho are a distant memory. Sarah has the second-fastest times in the region in the 100 and 200 this season and has not lost a race to a Class 3A opponent.

“I was gone one of her meets,” Adam said. “She called screaming that she PR’d in the 100.”

Personal records are noteworthy, of course, but for her parents, just seeing Sarah run this year, seeing her back to normal, is a blessing. First place. Last place. Does it matter? Their daughter is full of life again.

Sarah understands this, too.

“I can do whatever I want now,” she said. “After the meets, I now go home and celebrate. Being awake at school is nice, too. I feel 100 percent different.”

Sarah is back to being Sarah, running fast. She does not intend to slow down until she has to, which will come in about 10 years.

You see, because of her active lifestyle, her doctor performed the type of Ross Procedure preferred for athletes. While it is true she can do anything now, she will have to endure another surgery in about a decade. The cadaver valve she has now is not expected to keep up with her demand.

So yes, eventually, Sarah Takayoshi will have to do all of this again.

She expects to come out a winner — again.