Though recovered, she still remains a year behind the rest of her peers in school.
*Delaney struggled with a series of painful and long-lived injuries after being pushed too hard during a weightlifting competition in her athletics class at Jobe Middle School. The injuries required four surgeries, multiple hospital visits, checkups and tests. Since her procedures, she has resumed life as she once lived, aside from having to be held back one year as a freshman from the rest of her original class.
“I think that I took things for granted,” Delaney said. “Certainly, I took my health for granted. I do not think that I was aware of what it is like to deal with chronic illness or pain.”
While benching 125 pounds during her eighth-grade athletics class, the bar collapsed on her chest as a result of overworking herself that morning. She had already struggled at her 5 a.m. swimming practice with the 200’s for backstroke and freestyle. She tore her abdominal muscle, and as time passed, other critical problems arose such as fluid surrounding the heart.
“It was like having someone drive a huge spike into your chest, ask you to walk around with it for nine months and then finally taking it out,” Delaney said. “I wasn’t having fun. I would have given almost anything to have avoided that long and agonizing journey of hospitals, doctors, needles, and tests.”
Before Delaney underwent her surgery, she visited the doctor many times with little success in finding a diagnosis. In the end, she visited with over 16 doctors and endured over 129 procedures. It wasn’t until the 16th doctor and a visit to John Hopkins Medical School in Maryland that Delaney was able to receive her proper diagnosis: Abdominal Cutaneous Nerve Entrapment. After being given the diagnosis, Delaney underwent the surgery that helped to relieve the stress of the nerve in her abdomen and drain the mysterious fluid that surrounded her heart.
“The minute I came out of surgery, the constant pain that I had been in was finally gone,” Delaney said. “For the first time in nine months, I could smile again.”
Although the pain from the abdominal nerve was relieved, the year following the surgery was not easy either for Delaney. It took a full year afterward to recover, and to this day, the effects of the condition still display itself today. Because Delaney missed so much school for appointments and testing, she was held back a year behind her original graduating class of 2019 and is now a freshman while a good majority of her friends are currently sophomores.
“I’m more resentful, if anything [for what happened],” Delaney said. “We trust our teachers and coaches to guide and look out for us. Our parents entrust our well-being to them while we are school.”
Throughout the process of diagnosis and recovery, Delaney’s family tried contacting MISD officials in order to address the competitive max-weight lifting imposed upon middle schoolers through their athletic program. Delaney’s family sent documentation of the process of the diagnosis, pictures before and after the surgery and surgical reports and testing that she had been through.
“At this point, I can do almost anything,” Delaney said. “Extreme physical exertion is probably not on the agenda, but I can do most things.”
Delaney has resumed to a normal life, despite the odds of the process. She has since taken part in rock wall climbing, gone knee boarding and even bungee jumping in New Zealand. Delaney has even made the tennis team. However, with her busy debate schedule, she remains unsure of how she will have enough time for tennis.
“You have to take charge of your own health,” Delaney said. “Never stop with what one doctor or person says. If you have the will, you can find a way. You are never alone. Someone else out there is experiencing the same thing.”
*Name has been changed to protect privacy
