McDonald returns to the field after brain surgery

Duke cheers must have drowned out sighs of relief when Christie McDonald nailed a header past Marquette's goalkeeper on a sunny afternoon Sept. 17.

Congratulating the smiling sophomore with a flurry of hugs and high fives, the Blue Devils gathered around the girl that some people thought would never have the chance to score a goal again, let alone with her head.

Anyone in Koskinen Stadium that day who knew McDonald personally also knew that just four months earlier she was lying in a hospital bed in Los Angeles, surrounded by an altogether different kind of team.

Diagnosed with a brain tumor at the end of April, McDonald underwent surgery May 12 to remove a sticky, 1.5-centimeter lump from the left side of her brain.

After four hours of surgery, the benign tumor was removed. But because of necessary surgical procedures, so were McDonald's auditory and balance nerves. At 19 years old, the varsity athlete was without a sense of balance and the ability to hear in her left ear. But that didn't stop her from working to get back on the field.

McDonald had felt that way all along-get the tumor removed and get back to soccer. And after spending the second summer session on campus training to regain her strength and coordination, that's exactly what she did-the sophomore started Duke's opener against St. Louis and has played in every game on the schedule so far.

"It was really hard for me to get back, harder than I was expecting," McDonald said. "Everything I had gone through was to play this season, so it was just one of the most amazing feelings to be back with my team and be able to play again. It was great."

A standout from Newnan High School in Newnan, Ga., McDonald joined the Blue Devils in the fall of 2005.

"I was expecting [the doctors] to just give [the results] to my trainer, and that my trainer would tell me nothing was wrong," McDonald said.

McDonald certainly wasn't expecting a phone call at 7:30 a.m. on a Monday in April, asking her to report that same morning to Duke Hospital North for an appointment about her results. Getting into the car with her trainer, Elizabeth Zannolli, for the appointment, McDonald had to ask.

Zannolli had to tell her.

She didn't have brain lesions, Zannolli said, but tests did show a tumor. The good news was it wasn't cancerous. For McDonald, however, it was similar to a shock she had been through before-her best friend and soccer teammate, Jessica Wilson, was diagnosed with a brain tumor in fifth grade. And although the tumor was not cancerous, Wilson passed away when the girls were in seventh grade.

"Here I was thinking I was giving her good news by telling her it wasn't cancerous, and then she she says, 'My best friend died of a brian tumor, and it wasn't cancerous,'" Zannolli said. "She cried a little bit, but she got everything back together and went to talk to the doctors."

Tears dried, McDonald began to face her situation with a positive attitude. Sitting in the neurological ward at Duke Hospital North, Zannolli and McDonald filled out the necessary paperwork prior to the appointment. Some of the form questions, Zannolli said, hardly fit with McDonald's condition, and she remembered laughing with the freshman as the pair tried to complete the task.

"One of the other patients just looked up at us and said, 'Most people don't laugh when they're in this department,'" Zannolli said.

McDonald was obviously late to practice that day. While her teammates got their summer workouts from their speed and conditioning coach, McDonald went to talk to head coach Robbie Church.

When one of the trainers stepped into Church's office earlier that morning to tell him about McDonald's condition, Duke's sixth-year coach couldn't believe it was true.

So when McDonald herself walked through that same door, Church knew the situation. After tears and a talk, Church and McDonald laid out a plan for her recovery and return to soccer.

McDonald then went to tell her team why there was no way she was going to be able to follow the summer workouts-at least not right away. But McDonald couldn't get through the talk, and Zannolli had to finish it for her.

"A lot of people's eyes got big and jaws dropped," Church said.

Her teammates weren't the only ones in disbelief. While McDonald was lying down in the training room shortly after sharing the news, the team's academic coordinator, T.J. Grams, came over and started joking with her and asked her what was wrong. When McDonald said she wasn't tired and she wasn't sick, he told her to stop sulking.

"I just kind of looked at Z, my trainer, and she was just like, go ahead, make him feel bad," McDonald said. "So I was like, well actually I just found out I have a brain tumor. And he just did not know what to say."

Shocked, Grams looked at Zannolli for confirmation. And when the trainer nodded, he was still at a loss for words. Grams sought out the freshman the next day just to make sure she wasn't offended. She wasn't.

"I could tell he felt really bad about it, but I thought it was hilarious," McDonald said. "We still joke about it now sometimes."

Standing on a sunny street in Paris, France, Lisa McDonald's legs began to shake when her husband Andy called to tell her about their daughter's MRI results.

Lisa McDonald was on the next flight home.

Both Lisa and Andy McDonald spent the weekend in Durham, going to doctor's appointments and deciding the best course of action. Officially diagnosed with acoustic neuroma-a condition found in approximately 2,500 patients in the United States each year-McDonald was recommended to Dr. Derald Brackmann, an acoustic neuroma specialist, to have the tumor removed.

With the surgery scheduled for May 12, less than a month after McDonald's diagnosis, the McDonalds flew to California May 10.

Because of the tumor's location, which was causing it to press on the auditory nerve, the McDonalds originally preferred a surgical procedure that would attempt to save her hearing in her left ear.

But the surgeons decided against it in the end, worried about disturbing Christie's facial nerve-which could result in facial paralysis.

During surgery, Brackmann found the tumor wrapped around Christie's facial nerve. Already aware their daughter would lose her hearing and balance nerves, the McDonalds were glad she didn't lose all three.

As her parents and her brother, Mark, a senior at the University of Georgia, sat by her side, McDonald spent two weeks in Los Angeles recovering-two weeks, she said, that were both painful and miserable.

"I wasn't allowed to sneeze. If I sneezed, I had to let it out and couldn't control it," McDonald said. "Any straining at all I wasn't allowed to do, which was hard for me. I was only allowed to walk. I couldn't do anything really."

Determined to be ready by the beginning of the fall season, McDonald returned to Duke for the second summer session, taking one class and working with Zannolli on an almost-daily basis.

"Health was the first thing obviously," said Church, who stayed in contact with McDonald every day while she was in California. "But then it was how quickly can I get back."

Battling fatigue and dizzy spells, McDonald pushed herself.

Starting with exercises like sprint-jogs and changing directions while running, Zannolli began to include a soccer ball into McDonald's workouts. At first, McDonald worked on balancing.

"In rehab it is the balance thing that keeps them from going full speed, the other ear needs to compensate," Brackmann said. "It can take up to a month. She had a very good recovery for what she's doing."

With Zannolli, McDonald started touching the ball, passing, kicking and-later-heading. Zannolli said McDonald was nervous to head the ball initially but increased her confidence with each training session. Her enthusiasm and drive never let up.

"Sometimes I would have to back her down because she's a really tough kid," Zannolli said. "She's tougher on herself than everyone else is."

Even McDonald, however, couldn't stop herself from having a bad day. Some days she would be unavoidably dizzy and completely lacking in energy.

But when preseason rolled around, her hard work payed off. At the team's fitness check-in on the first day of practice, McDonald was one of the fittest players on the team, Church said.

Now in the middle of Duke's season, McDonald is back on the field, fighting only the occasional bad day. Without hearing in her left ear and a renewed sense of balance, she's back at full strength-"basically," she said.

McDonald still works with Zannolli a few times a week on coordination drills, like tracking a long ball across the field.

"She's really worked on that, so you can't even tell she had trouble with it in the game," Zannolli said.

And that's exactly what it looked like Sept. 17 at Koskinen, five minutes into the game against Marquette, when she scored her first goal of the season-on a header off a corner kick.