Year after amputation, swimmer chases Paralympic dream from Everett YMCA

EVERETT— Life can raise a lot of questions.

At 29 years old, James Hessen had questions like: “Now that I’m not serving in the Coast Guard, what comes next?” “Should my wife and I move back across the country?” “What should we name our baby daughter?”

But he couldn’t have anticipated: “Should I cut my foot off?”

It took him weeks to decide.

Now 33, Hessen is on his way to the USA Para Swimming World Series with hopes of qualifying for the 2024 Summer Paralympics in Paris.

A Cascade High School graduate, Hessen grew up not far from Milk House Coffee on Rucker Avenue — his mom used to work in the building back when it actually distributed milk. He and his wife Traci Hessen moved to Michigan when he was stationed there in the Coast Guard.

Then, in 2019, he fell during a routine ice rescue training. His ankle made a loud pop. He figured he’d rolled it.

He didn’t think it was a big deal, but he didn’t have much of a choice, he said — Hessen was stationed in Dollar Bay, a remote town of 1,000 people near Lake Superior. He’d have to wait six months for an MRI machine to be brought around on a semi anyway.

But the injury worsened and his quality of life deteriorated.

Six months later when he met with doctors, they found that he had a simple tendon tear in his posterior tibial, but the lack of initial treatment had done irreparable damage.

His foot started to angle, giving him a lopsided gait. But the angle became exaggerated, and at one point, Hessen said, his ankle protruded to point of looking like it could pop off anytime. He grimaced talking about it.

“Little kids — they watch you constantly, watch you walk,” Hessen said. “My nephews and nieces would tilt their heads and watch me, and they’d start to wing out one foot while walking. I was like, ‘Ugh, shoot me through the gut here.’”

Doctors inserted two metal plates and screwed a bolt through his ankle. But the metal didn’t jive with the organic matter of Hessen’s body.

Screws splintered out of place. Brittle tarsal bone broke. His skin turned shades of purple.

For three years, doctors told him the pain would be chronic.

This was James’ life now. He would never run again. Hiking was out of the question. Soon, a simple trip to the grocery store would become too much to bear. He underwent more surgeries.

He’d planned to serve 20 years in the Coast Guard, but suddenly he was medically retired, with a swollen sack of bone shards for a foot, and a baby on the way.

Hessen, now a Marysville resident, found a doctor in Edmonds who finally told him straight: The pain would never go away, and Hessen would be back in the operating room next year and so on. His foot would probably need to be amputated in a few decades.

“But we were about to have a kid,” Hessen said. “And I wanted to be a very involved, active parent. So that’s when I started searching around.”

He met with amputees and asked them about their lives.

“You can still do whatever you want to do, but you have to put in the work,” one patient told him at the amputee clinic.

He looked at his wife and newborn daughter, Maeve. He imagined a life where they could play together, run together — a life where he could keep up with Maeve, free of chronic pain.

He’d have to learn to walk again, but maybe he and his daughter would take their first steps together.

Her first birthday was in two months.

“This is my drive. I want her to see that it doesn’t matter what knocks you down — it’s how you get back up,” Hessen said.

On March 7, 2022, about a month after he’d first considered amputation, Hessen went under the knife.

Doctors amputated his right foot about 4 inches above the ankle. He spent a month in bed with his leg elevated. The cast weighed on Hessen, growing tiresome and bulky. The Veterans Affairs Amputee Clinic suggested he start swimming.

Hessen swam competitively in high school, but that was years ago.

Gravity holds less power in the pool. The pressure, both physical and mental, could float away. Maybe the persistent tingling in his limb could, too.

“It felt good to move. I hadn’t been able to move like that in almost four years since the injury,” Hessen said.

The goal was simple: Stay moving to help the healing. But then he got competitive.

Hessen started swimming laps with the Barracudas Masters team at the Everett YMCA in June. A month later, the coach stopped him.

“‘You’re fast. Like, qualify-for-the-Paralympic-trials fast,’” Hessen recalled her saying.

And she was right.

His mentality changed. He was no longer swimming laps to stay in shape. He was an athlete training for international competition.

Three months later in October, the Hessen family road-tripped to Georgia for the U.S. Paralympics Swimming classification event. Officials classified athletes into one of 14 disability classes before they competed for official times. The athletes hoped to qualify for the Citi Para Swimming World Series USA in Minneapolis from April 20 to 22.

Qualifying would give athletes a shot at the 2024 Paralympic games in Paris.

Traci Hessen tried to wrangle Maeve as the 1½-year-old dodged her way onto the pool deck. Maeve just wanted to swim with dad. Meanwhile, Hessen was concerned about competing in an Olympic-sized 50-meter pool, instead of a typical 25-yard length.

Hessen swam hard. He qualified.

Meanwhile, Hessen did learn to walk again — alongside Maeve in the living room. He would’ve even gone skiing this winter if parts for his prosthetic weren’t back-ordered.

With dreams of Paris, his daily routine is drastically different.

Every weekday at 4:45 a.m., Hessen is out the door. By 5:15 a.m., he’s swimming laps. At 6 a.m., he starts training with the Masters team. He eats incessantly, trying to regain the calories he burns from two workouts per day. This has been his life for months. Traci Hessen drives him to practices, cheering him on. Maeve is almost 2 years old now.

Lucie Lamaine began coaching Masters swimmers in December, and when she first started, she had no idea Hessen was an amputee: “He was just fast.”

“People walk in (to practice in the morning) typically pretty sleepy, but James is already there swimming, getting his yardage in,” she added. “He’s super, super dedicated.”

Competitive swimming is a monotonous grind. It’s muscle memory. Arm over arm, you rotate to breathe, pulling yourself through the water. You follow the blue line at the bottom of the pool until you plunge, flip and follow the line back. Cold water burns against hot skin, and you can’t tell you’re sweating until you come up for air. There’s no music. There’s no idle conversation with the person swimming beside you. There’s just the counting of lap after lap after lap.

On Wednesday, Hessen swam 6,000 yards. That’s about 3½ miles. One hundred and twenty laps.

“He has a totally different mindset than the average swimmer, and your mind is really what drives you,” Lamaine said. “Most people would say, ‘Oh, I can’t even do that,’ but he’s in there, with one leg, with the mindset that he can do it. And he can. He’s willing himself to do it. He comes in every single day, and he does it. He executes.”

Hessen pushes his teammates simply by being there, Lamaine said. She has watched other swimmers improve by practicing in his lane, competing with him. They’re pushing one another to be faster, she said.

There’s more to a race than what happens in the water: the dive is pivotal.

“With just one leg, it’s very, very difficult to do,” Lamaine said. “You have to keep your balance, climb up on the block, pull back slightly in anticipation of that forward motion. … Then there’s lag time (because the beep) is not consistent. He’s got to balance but still have enough push and pressure, without falling forward too soon.”

He has seven practices left.

Hessen will race the 50-meter, 100-meter and 400-meter freestyle, as well as the 200-meter Individual Medley and the 100-meter breaststroke at the Para Swimming World Series in Minneapolis, starting April 20.

Other athletes will travel with sponsors, personal trainers or a professional team. He’s just a “YMCA Masters swimmer hoping to compete with the best of them.”

“That’s a hero to me,” Lamaine said. “Someone that says ‘I’m going to do something’ and they follow through especially if it’s really difficult. It’s really admirable.”

Hessen is now 13 months past his amputation surgery. He’s past the chronic pain and the big questions.

“I want Maeve to know that you might be dealt a bad hand, but it’s how you respond to it — it’s not going to keep you down,” Hessen said. “It may be a temporary setback, but you can make it a positive future.”

The Hessen family will drive nearly 1,700 miles for the three-day event. He’s fundraising online to support the journey.

Kayla J. Dunn: 425-339-3449; kayla.dunn@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @KaylaJ_Dunn.