Deanna Babcock - Thoughts and Prayers

Below is a note from my coach about one of his
triatletes he has been coaching. I know you don't
know this girl, but we are trying to get a ton of
people to send get well cards. If you want to send
one, just sign your name. This would be greatly
appreciated. This girl has been training for FLorida
Ironman and tomorrow morning she may lose her leg.
Read below. Address for cards is at the bottom.
Please send if you can find the time.

Many of you have, in the last 48 hours, been emailing
or calling me with questions about how Deanna
Babcock(age 22), one of my NCSU student athletes and a
shop employee at CSH is doing. On Friday Deanna was
swimming at the NCSU pool, and did not surface. The
lifeguards pulled her out, and revived her. They had
to defibrillate her twice on deck, and from what I
understand, she had to be jump-started three more
times by emergency medical staff later in the day.
Those part-time NCSU kids working as lifeguards really
earned their pay on Friday.

Wake EMS immediately iced Deanna to preserve bodily
and brain function in her oxygen-deprived state. This
in not commonly done by rescue squads, and Wake is
innovate in this technique, but it seems to have saved
her life. Brain scans on Saturday indicate good
things, and the doctors are keeping Deanna in an
induced coma to better control the rate at which they
warm her to room temp, and the rate at which her brain
wakes up and recovers. Her parents are here from
Michigan, and Deanna’s grad student friends, triathlon
teammates, and faculty friends are taking good care of
her visiting parents. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that her slow and positive recovery
was on track, until yesterday when her legs started
swelling. This is not unusual, but the calf swelling
was stopping circulation to her feet. To save her
feet from amputation, the doctors performed emergency
surgery last night to open up the layers of fascia
surrounding her calf muscles. Our muscles are
restrained inside sheaths, kind of like plastic wrap,
to keep them sliding without sticking to each other.
Her calves were swelling and were restrained by the
sheaths, and this was pinching the blood vessels.
Deanna’s calves are actually open and exposed right
now to let the muscle expand, and the let the blood
regain circulation. She survived the surgery. But,
the doctors, upon seeing the actual calf muscle, feel
that it has deteriorated from lack of circulation, and
they fear her leg will not recover. Tomorrow morning
the doctors are going to make a decision if her leg is
recovering, and if its recovery is impeding her total
body and brain recovery from the near drowning. They
told us last night that they will amputate her leg
above the knee if she doesn’t improve by Tuesday
morning.

One of her doctors is an ultra distance cyclist, and
we have talked at length about how this happened in
the first place – why did Deanna all of a sudden
collapse while swimming. What we are able to piece
together about her day leading up to the swim session
is that she had worked outside all day on a grad
student project on a construction site (Deanna is
researching ways to help DOT preserve soil embankments
from collapsing, and she spent all day in the heat and
humidity hand seeding and stabilizing a large soil
bank in the widening project on Davis Drive.) Then,
in what we think was a very dehydrated, exhausted, and
most like glycogen-depleted state, she opted to swim
instead of bagging the workout. We are, at this
point, thinking that Deanna bonked while dehydrated,
while exhausted, while swimming.

My point to all this is for you to please maintain
hydration and nutrition levels in hot weather. If you
are tired – bag the workout, and do it later after
resting or just call it a day. If the objective to
cross the finish line at a race, then you need to be
alive more than you need to be trained.

Deanna was training for the Duke Half Iron, and for
Ironman Florida. Last night, as I looked at Deanna’s
mom’s wrist, where she is wearing Deanna’s Ironman
watch, her mom told me that Deanna is in fact racing
an Ironman right now, and did in fact survive the
swim, but just needs to get across the finish line.
Please keep Deanna and her family in your thoughts and
prayers right now – this kid really needs all the help
she can get.

Deanna Babcock
Critical Care Unit
Wake Medical Center
3000 New Burn Avenue
Raleigh, NC 27610