Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 17, 1994 TAG: 9404180021
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LEXINGTON LENGTH: Long
If it is better to be lucky than good, it's even better to be lucky and good.
Nicole Ripken carries those notions wherever she goes on the Washington and Lee campus this spring. She is scarred, but says she isn't scared. She doesn't wear her feelings on her sleeve. Wearing a helmet at times is difficult enough.
"I'm very, very fortunate," Ripken said. "I'm lucky to still be playing lacrosse. I'm fortunate to still be here at school, going to class. I'm probably lucky to be alive."
Ripken, a junior history major, scored the winning goal with one second remaining in W&L's championship victory over Roanoke in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference tournament last spring. Then, she scored the first goal in the school's NCAA women's lacrosse tournament history.
That's old news. The December day after Ripken arrived at her Baltimore home following W&L's winter exams, she began to experience severe headaches. The worst pain was at the back of her head, just above her neck. She guessed maybe it was a slipped disk. Her parents ordered her to see a doctor the next day. Then she spent the Christmas holidays "on the couch, zonked on maximum dosages of codeine," Ripken said. "They couldn't find anything."
The pain worsened. A CAT scan was scheduled on New Year's Day at Johns Hopkins Hospital. "It showed something, but they couldn't be sure what it was," Ripken said. "They needed an MRI."
The magnetic resonance imaging exam told Ripken's doctors she "had a brain tumor, or a mass of blood vessels that for some reason were swelling and bleeding."
She was scheduled for surgery several days later, and was given steroids to reduce the swelling. "The pain went way down in only 15 minutes," Ripken said.
She was told surgery could take 10 hours. She was told she might never play lacrosse again. She also was told the chances her surgery would go well were "very good, because of where what they had found was located."
"Probably the most scared I was came during the CAT scan," Ripken said. "They just found this huge thing, and they said I needed an MRI, and all I could think was, `I have cancer. Am I going to die? Am I going to be OK?' Here I was, 20 years old.
"When it came to the surgery, I was really scared I'd go in there and not come back out again."
During six hours of surgery, a tumor the size of a small orange was removed from the back of Ripken's head, at the cerebellum. She awoke on the operating table, which was OK, she said, "because I had to stay awake for the next 48 hours so they could do tests on my brain."
The tumor was benign. Her doctors said it likely was congenital in nature, and it may have been growing since birth or at least age 2. She still faced a month in the hospital. Ripken would lose 20 pounds, but she gained a greater appreciation for life.
She also learned that her athleticism and fortitude had carried her through more than the surgery.
"The doctors said that because of the pressure the tumor was putting on my brain all those years, my heart had to beat twice as fast as one of a normal person for me just to live," Ripken said.
"I'm thankful I had those headaches. After the surgery, the doctors told my parents that if we hadn't realized something was wrong, I'd have been dead by the time I ended up going into surgery."
Ripken has a long S-shaped scar on the back of her head, although her hair has grown over the cut. She also has a soft spot at the base of her skull - "and always will," she said. That made her return to lacrosse more difficult, and W&L coach Jan Hathorn received permission for Ripken to wear a taekwondo helmet on the field.
"When I was in the hospital, I looked down at my legs and they were so skinny, it looked like someone had taken a needle and just sucked the muscles out of them," Ripken said. "Once I got out, the doctors said I should do what I felt I could do, so I tried biking and the Stairmaster and weights before I started sprinting.
"They said I couldn't play any contact sports for three months. When I did, I had to wear a helmet. We talked about a hockey helmet, but that wouldn't work, because it couldn't be a hard helmet.
"The martial-arts helmet is soft and light, but it's hot. It seems like I sweat eight times more with it on, and when I take it off, it feels like a huge wind is going by. But if I play sports, I have to wear it because of the soft spot on my head."
Ripken returned to school, and three months to the day after her surgery she returned to lacrosse practice. "After seeing her in practice, I could tell Nicole was capable of playing," Hathorn said. "She was much stronger than I thought she might be."
So, Hathorn started Ripken against Sweet Briar on April 11. After missing half of the season and practicing three times, she scored six goals in her first game. Turns out her third cousin, Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken Jr., isn't the only good Baltimore athlete named Ripken.
"Nicole is accurate when she says stamina is what she hasn't gotten back yet," Hathorn said. "That's the longest and last hurdle, at least athletically."
Emotionally, Ripken is a different person, too.
"She's a lot more preoccupied person than she has been in the past," Hathorn said. "That's to be expected, I guess. She's working hard all of the time, but you can't expect her to be the same. There's a weighty thing on her mind.
"We're crossing each bridge as we get to it. As long as she talks about it, she's OK with it. Nicole is working hard to get herself to the place where she feels what happened is 100 percent behind her."
That day won't come soon. It may never come, Ripken concedes. She has to undergo an MRI every six months for the next five years.
"I think about it all of the time," she said. "This sounds crazy, but I have two lecture classes in which you sit there for an hour and write notes. I like those, because that's the only time when I don't think about what happened.
"On the field, I'm not afraid. I've had some contact and I've been OK. I've fallen, and the other day I did a somersault. The helmet's not very attractive, I'm sure, but it beats not playing."
At St. Paul's in Baltimore, Ripken was an honorable mention lacrosse All-American. She also played field hockey and basketball. Ripken attends W&L on an academic grant-in-aid, the James Keelty Honors Scholarship. She wants to attend law school, although she admits "a totally new appreciation" for the medical profession after her "wonderful care."
"Before I had surgery, I was sitting there and the doctors were talking to me and I was paying attention, but I wasn't hearing much," Ripken said. "Then it kind of dawned on me and I said, `You mean I might never play lacrosse again?'
"They said that was a possibility. I just lost it. I started bawling and screaming, `Please take me home!' Here this was my favorite thing, and they were telling me I might never do it again."
She is playing again, with 10 goals in four games since her return and 70 in 36 career games. She ranks fifth on W&L's career goals list. She also plays the game differently than she did in her first two seasons.
"To be honest with you, I don't know if I could have dealt with it, being here and not being able to play," Ripken said. "It was nice to play well in my first game back, because that told me I was back, even though I got winded.
"After what I went through, I appreciate things much more. One day I was out running sprints and, as crazy as it sounds, I told myself how lucky I was to be there. I think I'm more emotional about things now. I appreciate other people more, too.
"Something like this makes you see things with a totally different perspective. It's amazing, really."
by CNB