Usually, when a surgeon removes a grapefruit-sized tumor from the top of your brain, you won’t be competing in triathlons anytime soon.
Actually, doctors told Ann Keverline, 33, she would never walk again.
Don’t tell that to a determined, courageous Everett woman who bucked the odds to get back on her feet. On Sunday, this spunky woman will test her mettle, albeit with training wheels on her bicycle, at the Danskin Triathlon in Seattle. She’ll compete with Team Survivor Northwest, a group that offers physical activities and sporting adventures for women cancer survivors.
Crossing the finish line in her first triathlon will be Keverline’s physical statement that she’s back. Back to work, to her home and to the mobile life that was almost snatched away by a tumor.
In 2002, the technical writer suffered a grand mal seizure at her Everett home.
“I woke up on the floor of my kitchen with my brother checking my pulse, and a friend cradling my head to one side to keep me from choking,” Keverline said. “My brother rushed me to the emergency room.”
They found a large tumor on the top of her head that was removed at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. Keverline was paralyzed after surgery.
“My dad would feed me three times a day,” she said. “I had no movement other than my eyes and my mouth, but even that was limited.”
One doctor said she would never walk again. The graduate of California State University at Sacramento spent two months at Harborview recuperating and six months at Delta Rehabilitation Center in Snohomish.
“My first impressions of Delta were not good,” she said. “It had a definite institutional feel, and most of the residents there were extremely head injured. I cried a lot, but it soon became apparent that it was the best place for me. The staff cared and tried to make me feel like a human being, even though I could not go to the bathroom by myself or dress myself.”
Wonderful therapists got her on her feet. She made friends among some of the residents there, most of whom will never leave Delta. She used flash cards, relearned math, read and did puzzles.
“I even went to the bathroom stalls where there were bars I used to exercise,” she said. “After a few more months of hard work, I was using a walker.”
Her brother, Jeff Keverline, a student at Western Washington University, brought her dogs to visit her.
“Seeing my brother and my dogs reminded me of all the good things I had waiting for me when I got home,” Keverline said. “That motivated me to work even harder.”
She went back to Harborview for surgery to install a bowllike prosthesis to cover her brain where surgeons had removed part of her skull, then completed rehabilitation at Delta. Back at her cozy home overlooking I-5, she is working in Seattle and has a home business at keverlinestechnicalservices.com.
Learning about the upcoming triathlon inspired her during workouts on the road, in the pool and at the gym. She said she is up and at it because of God, sheer stubbornness and determination.
“I still have difficulty with balance, coordination and headaches,” Keverline said. “One of my goals is to learn to play guitar again. I think I’m going to concentrate on that goal after the triathlon is over. I also want to get my master’s in mental health counseling.”
She thanks God for enabling her to recover as much as she has, for leaving the connections in her brain in place for her to discover them again, and for putting people in her life who helped through her recovery. Keverline thanks her family and friends for their support.
When everything is taken away from you, even the ability to open your eyes or feed yourself, she said, you realize that it’s the little things that make life wonderful. The stopwatch reading won’t matter one bit.
Columnist Kristi O’Harran: 425-339-3451 or oharran@heraldnet.com.
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