Three weeks ago, while running on the court, 18-year-old Tierra Rogers felt her heart speed up, then careen out of control. She tried to sit down but sagged before she reached the bench.
Tierra Rogers the Survivor
It lasted only a few moments, so Tierra figured it was probably nothing. After all, she had suffered from asthma since she was 14 and took Advair to mitigate it. She’d had a couple of similar episodes before, and had once called home to complain to her mom that “my heart hurts.” So this wasn’t that out of the ordinary.
Then, 30 minutes later, outside the training room, it happened again. Only this time Rogers wobbled and keeled over, toppling into the arms of Cal women’s basketball trainer Ann Caslin.
“She wasn’t breathing and she was unconscious,” remembers Caslin. Fortunately, the episode didn’t occur on a playground, and Caslin was able to grab an Automatic External Defibrillator from the gym hallway and use it on Tierra.
An ambulance arrived within minutes and took Tierra to nearby Alta Bates hospital for observation.
After being transferred to UC San Francisco Medical Center, she was diagnosed with Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Dysplasia, which can cause abnormal electrical rhythms in the heart and is one of the most common causes of sudden cardiac death in young athletes. So on Oct. 1 doctors implanted a defibrillator in her chest.
Rogers says she hasn’t quite processed it yet. After all, you can’t give up something you love just like that and forget about it. Hence her presence at practices, and in those black hightops. Rather than run away from the game, she might well cling to it tighter for a while.
