All Heart: Women's Basketball Player Anne-Marie Torp

Jan. 24, 2005

 

LOGAN, Utah - Healthy college athletes shouldn't have to worry about suffering from a stroke, right?

 

Utah State women's basketball player Anne-Marie Torp had no reason to even think that her twice a year bout with migraines was anything to be too concerned with. No one can blame her either, she is a 20-year old athlete who has spent her life playing basketball and taking pride in being in tip-top shape.

 

"I would always get a couple of migraines a year," Torp said. "But I was always pretty much able to sleep them off and never really thought much of them."

 

Torp's annual struggle with migraines turned into something more than just a chance encounter with a bad headache early last November.

 

"The migraines I started to get in November were out of the ordinary," Torp explained. "Every time I got one I had to go to the hospital. It got to the point that my roommates joked about how they had a hospital bag all packed for me - like a pregnant woman would have - just because they didn't know when I might be headed back for another hospital visit."

 

On November 25, the day before Thanksgiving, things once again turned for the worst as Torp woke-up and couldn't feel the right side of her body.

 

"When I first woke-up I was really worried that I couldn't feel the right side of my body, but I just kind of shook it off and went back to sleep," Torp said. "I then got up a few minutes later and went into my roommates' room and said, `I think I'm paralyzed.'

 

Torp slowly started to regain the feeling in her right arm and eventually laid back down to sleep for a few more hours. Another migraine soon set in upon her getting up and she was once again headed back to the hospital.

 

"When I went back to the hospital they just treated me like they normally would for a migraine and gave me some pain medication and I went home again," Torp recalled. "Then that night I was still throwing up and still felt sick so I went back to the hospital. They did a CAT scan when I went back but they didn't find anything. They sent me home again and the next morning my mom flew out because she was really worried."

 

With frustration mounting, Torp once again was sent home, not knowing why she was getting these migraines and why they were making her so sick.

 

"When my mom first saw me, apparently I looked really sick and she said, `we really need to go back to the hospital,' Torp explained. "So I went back for the third time and they finally did an MRI and the stroke showed up on that. They then rushed me to LDS Hospital (in Salt Lake City) in an ambulance and they did two more MRIs while I was down there. They also did a bunch of other tests while I was there and they finally came back and told me I had a hole in my heart."

 

As one might imagine, the news of both the stroke and hole came as quit a shock.

 

"The [news about the] stroke was pretty traumatic," Torp recalled. "My mom was hysterical with the news, but I had pretty much all the feeling back so I had kind of just shook it off. When I heard about the hole though, I thought I was going to have to have open-heart surgery. Ten years ago if I would have had this problem I would have had to have open-heart surgery, but with the technology these days they just go through an artery in your leg."

 

Making the tough news a little easier to swallow was the fact that Anne-Marie's brother's football game was on T.V. in the room they were waiting in. John Torp is a second team all-Big 12 punter for the Colorado Buffaloes and CU happened to be playing rival Nebraska that day.

 

"Everything didn't really hit me at the time because I was watching [John's] game on T.V.," Torp said about her reaction to the news. "I don't think it really hit me until the day of the surgery."

 

Surgery was set for Dec. 9, and due to some problems with being able to schedule a surgery in Salt Lake City, Torp ended up having to fly back to Denver to have the procedure.

 

"I actually got a migraine the night before we were to fly to Denver and so I was in the hospital again," Torp said. "They ended up giving me some blood thinner because they had found some blood clots in my leg and this was a preventative measure to avoid complications on the flight home."

 

Things didn't get any easier for Torp during the surgery; she ended up having some sort of immunity to the anesthetic that allowed her to remain alert during the whole process. She can vividly recall almost everything that happened:

 

 

"I felt the initial stuff when they went through my leg," she said. "The only really bad pain I had was lying on the metal table. My tailbone was killing me, so that was really the only reason I kept asking for more pain medication. I was watching the monitor of them working on my heart because they had an x-ray machine on me. At one point they were trying to get the device to collapse, but it wouldn't function like it was supposed to. So they were kind of pushing on it - it was one of the more impressive medical moments I have ever seen. While they were pushing they slipped a couple of times and all of a sudden my heart would skip a beat. They also did something else where I would get chest pains every time I would take a deep breath. I started to panic a little because I didn't think my EKG's were hooked up because the doctor's weren't panicking while any of this was happening. I thought to myself, `my heart just skipped a beat, are you guys paying attention?' Probably the scariest part of the surgery was that I was so awake that I could hear them when they panicked a few times. I was hearing clear conversations of panic."

 

Panic is definitely the last thing you want to sense as a team of medical professional works on your heart. But apparently the doctors were having a hard time getting the placement right of the apparatus that would serve as, for lack of a better word, a "plug" for the hole in Torp's heart.

 

"After they stitched me up the first time they had to cut the stitches and string the tools back in," Torp said. "Because the doctors weren't happy with the placement of the device.

 

They were finally able to get things situated, which made Torp feel much more relaxed and despite having to take things easy, her recovery has gone pretty well.

 

"Things have been going O.K., but I have had a few problems lately that's why I have to have this heart monitor," Torp said, pointing to a monitor that was slung over her shoulder. "They recently put me on some new medication and I haven't had any heart problems since then - it's only been two days though. I go day by day for now."

 

During her recovery Torp has had a lot of time to put things into perspective.

 

"Before [the stroke and the surgery] I had this mentality that I was invincible, that a stroke or heart problems could never happen to me," Torp said. "Lately when I have been having problems I've started to realize that this is really serious. If I have another stroke I will be done playing basketball and that is one thing that really makes me think because basketball has been my life for as long as I can remember."

 

Helping Torp recover both physically and emotionally has been the inspired play of her teammates.

 

"It's nice that our team is kicking butt!," Torp said emphatically. "It's hard not being able to play because you feel disconnected, but our team has been awesome and they are just kind of getting me through it."

 

Although looking in from outside the lines is tough, Torp is learning how she can help until she gets the call that it's O.K. to play again.

 

"I'm just a cheerleader and the team's number one fan right now," said Torp, who is on the bench at every home game.

 

 

 

Utah State women's basketball (10-8, 5-4 BWC) continues its four-game homestand this week as Cal Poly (9-8, 3-6 BWC) and UC Santa Barbara (11-7, 8-1 BWC) visit Logan. The Aggies and Mustangs match-up on Thursday at 7 p.m., while Utah State  faces UCSB in a matinee on Saturday at 2 p.m.