ASU Softball Player Fights Brain Tumor

“Do you want to see my scar?” Dani Rae Lougheed says as she pulls her hair up and turns around to expose a bare strip of skin that runs up the nape of her neck and a few inches up her scalp.

Lougheed, a communications junior and ASU softball player, has a definite presence within a room. Without inhibition, she smiles wide and gives a firm handshake. There are no signs in her demeanor that would reveal the battle she fought for more than a year.

In summer of 2006, Lougheed was diagnosed with a brain tumor in her occipital lobe.

The rundown

A lifelong athlete, Lougheed describes herself as a fierce competitor; she’s always pushing herself hard to be the best. “It was always about working out, all about softball,” she says.

In high school she was sought out by several schools for softball. In 2006, Lougheed gave her verbal agreement to play for the Sun Devils. ASU offered a scholarship and Lougheed says she had everything to look forward to. Then things took a turn.

In the summer before her senior year of high school, Lougheed noticed a small change in her performance. “I had been having some pretty bad migraines, but nothing too serious,” she says.

While at a college recruiting tournament in Colorado, Lougheed felt that her depth perception shift. “I was over-running balls, I couldn’t catch anything and I was getting thrown out at second base, which shouldn’t happen,” Lougheed says.

After numerous misdiagnoses, a visit to her chiropractor let on that something was terribly wrong. The softball player could not close her eyes and stand without falling. Her chiropractor suggested she get a CT scan or an MRI, which could reveal abnormalities in her brain.

It was Lougheed’s mother who received the phone call with the results. Her parents sat her down after a few days and gave her the news. She had a brain tumor.

“My first reaction — I laughed,” Lougheed says. “It’s never been something simple with me,” she says referring to her childhood maladies that were always more complicated than they seemed.

But rather than be upset about her results, Lougheed says she took the news with stride. Her “let’s do this” attitude was the first step on her path to recovery. Fortunately, Lougheed also had the support of her family to prepare her for the grueling journey ahead.

The fight

The following months were trying for the then 17-year-old. As she sat in her hospital bed awaiting surgery, she found herself  fearing for her future in softball.

Lougheed suggested her mother call her coach Clint Myers, head softball coach at ASU, to tell him about her situation. She feared she could stand to lose her scholarship due to the potential ramifications of surgery.

She feared the worst, but her mother returned with good news. “He said once a Sun Devil, always a Sun Devil, and he’s going to honor your scholarship no matter what happens,” her mom said.

Softball was her new incentive. “I was like, I’m gonna get through this because I have something to work toward,” Lougheed says.

After being released from surgery, Lougheed says she felt like she was out of the woods. And though she was still recovering from surgery, the antsy teen was anxious to attend the first day of her senior year.

“I lasted about two hours,” Lougheed says. Doped up on antibiotics, she was walking around campus like the walking dead, she says. The episode triggered profuse vomiting and weakness. Lougheed returned to the hospital where she was told that she had acquired a staph infection. Although there were no specifics, her doctors said the staph infection could have risen from unsanitary conditions during her surgery.

After a few days of hospitalized observation, she was released for the second time. Lougheed went home to begin physical therapy. She was told it would take six months to a year for her to fully recover. “I am not a very emotional person,” Lougheed says, “but sometimes I’d go to physical therapy and spend an hour crying.”

The road to recovery was more challenging than Lougheed expected. Simple tasks like putting marbles in a cup to regain her hand-eye coordination were a challenge. “Pillows were heavy,” Lougheed says. “I could barely pick up pillows.”

And it was more than regaining physical strength — it was about having to re-learn all the simple motions of everyday life. Turning the car ignition and responding to simple commands took time to mentally process and execute. But the baby steps where helping Lougheed recuperate.

Lougheed had two additional relapses. “I was throwing up at least six or seven times a day,” she says. She was admitted into the hospital for the third time and was found to have contracted chemical meningitis. But a mere week after being released, the severe nausea and blinding migraines had returned. Lougheed also noticed that fluid was draining from her surgical wound. Fearing that her brain was rejecting the mesh they had placed there, Doctors prepped her for surgery. However, they soon discovered that it had simply been a popped stitch that had allowed brain fluid to leak and caused the pain.

After days in the ICU, doctors deemed Lougheed stable enough to go home. “My mom was scared to death to take me home because every time she did I’d have to come back,” she says.

And indeed, the pattern continued. Just two hours after coming home from the hospital, Lougheed started feeling really sick again. She was vomiting profusely and shaking violently from the pain.

“I didn’t think I was going to make it,” she says. After an agonizing ambulance ride back to the hospital, she found herself in yet another hospital bed. This time, doctors told Lougheed that she had bacterial meningitis.

Lougheed says the cause of the several conditions she picked up is not certain. It could have been the fact that she was constantly being poked and prodded with tubes and IV lines, but chances are that it was due to lack of sterilization in the operating rooms, she says. Whatever the case, Lougheed was in her bleakest hour.

“I couldn’t do it anymore,” Lougheed says. “I was sick of it.” Despite her positive attitude through her illness, Lougheed says she was at her lowest point and just wanted it all to stop.

Four different ailments, five visits to the hospital and 11 spinal taps later, Lougheed was released for a final time. She admits she was not the same person she was going into the process as she was coming out. “[A person] doesn’t go through something like this and expect to be the same,” she says.

Lougheed was feeling better about things, and in face of the hard times she was presented with, she was determined to get better and finish her physical therapy.

Finally in the clear, Lougheed was well enough to attend one of  ASU’s softball games with her IV in tow. “At this point I was on steroids,” Lougheed says. “I was 50 pounds heavier, growing sideburns and a mustache, eating my life away.”

Lougheed slowly worked her way back into athletic condition. Though she was not at her full potential then, she was making progress and managed to play for her high school softball team in the spring of her senior year.

The future

Today the 21-year-old is back on the field again. She visits the doctor annually for an MRI because although her brain tumor is the least common, it has the highest probability of re-occurring.

“I would say I just now got to 100 percent, and it’s been two years,” Lougheed says.

Although the migraines still occur from time to time, Lougheed says it’s the weather that affects her most. Last year during the severe thunderstorms, the softball player says her migraines returned and she spent her time curled up in the cold tile floor for relief. “Everyone jokes around that I can tell when its going to rain,” she says.

She says she is thankful for the support of her coach and the way ASU treated her. “They honor my scholarship. I get to be part of a national championship team,” she says. “I get to continue to play the sport that I love when I could be paralyzed right now.”

Lougheed says she has met a lot brain tumor survivors since she joined the Students Supporting Brain Tumor Research (SSBTR) her senior year. SSBTR is an organization that raises money to fund brain tumor research in hopes of finding a cure.

“It is a lot more common that people even understand,” she says.

The Walk

Saturday, Feb. 27th marks the ninth annual Phoenix Walk-A-Thon and for the first time, the walk is being held at what the even calls “Sun Angel Stadium,” or ASU’s Sun Devil Stadium.

The ASU softball team will donate their Friday game against the University of Florida to the cause. All proceeds will go SSBTR.

“I am a lot different now because of what happened than I was before,” Lougheed says. She says she was very routine and strategic, “I think my priorities were screwed up at the time.”

The athlete says the support of her family and friends and her faith were crucial to her recovery. “I’m a statistic now, yeah,” Lougheed says. “But I want to be known for being a good softball player, not just for being that girl who had a brain tumor.”

If  You Go…

SSBTR Ninth Annual Walk-A-Thon

Feb. 27 at ASU’s Sun Angel Stadium

Noon to 3 p.m.

Sign ups at the MU fountain continue from 10:00 am until 2:00 pm Monday through Friday, Feb. 26.

You can also go online and register at ssbtr.org

Contact the reporter at Javega1@asu.edu

Tagged as: ASU Softball, Brain Tumor, SSBTR, Walk-a-thon