On a path to recovery

The girl who came within inches of losing her life now lives 10 feet off the ground.

Kristin Seaton, a sophomore outside hitter on Arkansas’ volleyball team, was thrown from an all-terrain vehicle July 7, 2006, a day that began as ordinarily as any other in the life of a 19-year-old college student. While coaches no doubt cringe at the thought of their athletes climbing onto such machines, Seaton didn’t think twice about hopping into a friend’s truck and going for a few hours’ worth of four-wheeling fun.

The destination that day was a series of paths and trails near Uniontown, a community tucked 20 miles north of Fort Smith near the Arkansas-Oklahoma border. Though her parents had refused previous requests for a fourwheeler of her own, Seaton had ridden with friends since she was in high school and considered herself a safe and capable driver.

But nothing had prepared Seaton for what happened on that remote stretch of gravel road.

“It happened so quick,” Seaton said. “It was just a sharp turn and I flew off, and the next thing I know it flipped on top of me.”

Seaton had been propelled over the handlebars when the four-wheeler balked at the sharp, sudden turn. By the time she landed and opened her eyes, Seaton could see the machine tumbling toward her.

The front of the four-wheeler landed on Seaton’s right hip, fracturing her pelvis in five places. An intense blast of pain was followed by the sight of the rear of the vehicle falling fast toward Seaton’s head.

In a move that she is convinced saved her life, Seaton managed to turn her head slightly. As she did, she heard and felt the fourwheeler whiz past her ear before it slammed into her shoulder, breaking three ribs.

The first thing that popped into Seaton’s mind, besides the pain, was her volleyball career.

“I was laying there thinking my career could be over,” she said. “I couldn’t feel my right leg, and I couldn’t really move it. I was thinking that I might not just be able to play sports, I might not be able to walk.”

Seaton’s friend circled back and she initially tried to assure him she would be fine, that the injured leg was the only problem.

“All of a sudden I started coughing blood up and I was, like, ‘OK, I’m not that fine,’” Seaton said.

Pangs of panic pulsed between the two when they realized neither of their cell phones were functioning in the wildernesslike surroundings. Seaton’s friend quickly decided to leave Seaton and return to his truck.

For what she guesses was 10 minutes, Seaton lay on the ground and waited for him to return. Once he got back, he loaded Seaton into the single-cab pickup truck and made a beeline for Fort Smith.

The trip took approximately half an hour, even at speeds approaching 90 miles per hour, and was an excruciating experience for Seaton. Not only did the pain from her injuries intensify when the truck bounced or shifted because of bumps and changes of direction, but Seaton also could feel the blood rising and subsiding in her throat.

Racing down the highway with her waders-clad feet hanging out of the open window, she tried to fight back thoughts about the possibility that her volleyball career had come to a crashing end. She thought of all the work she’d put in since the conclusion of her freshman season and how the chances for a breakout season were as broken as her bones.

“I was good to go, good to play,” Seaton said. “Everything was perfect.”

Seaton came to Arkansas from Fort Smith Northside in 2005, just the second homegrown player to garner a scholarship offer from Coach Chris Poole. A top-50 recruit nationally, Seaton was eased into the Lady Razorbacks’ rotation as a freshman, playing mostly a reserve role behind established starters.

Still, Seaton showed enough promise that Poole begin to think of her as a cornerstone for the future. He altered his recruiting strategy and received a reward of sorts when Seaton began to blossom during off-season workouts.

Loaded with natural physical talent, Seaton touched as high as 10-3 during vertical-jump testing. She added strength and attacked conditioning work with a vengeance, molding herself into the best physical shape of her life. Though Seaton posted a modest 49 kills as a freshman, she was determined to make more of an impact in 2006. Instead, she found herself suffering through an hour’s worth of X-rays and imaging scans as she lay immobilized in a hospital just six weeks before the start of the season.

STARTING OVER Only after getting the images they needed did nurses begin to administer intravenous pain medication. They also told Seaton they needed to notify her parents.

Fearing an “I told you so” reaction, Seaton begged nurses to let her place the call and explain what had happened. The nurses shot down that idea, and one of them left to make the call.

Dana Seaton works as a counselor at a junior high school in Fort Smith and has seen his share of all-terrain vehicle crash victims. Some of the stories don’t have happy endings, and that’s what ran through his mind when he and his wife, Carol, received the call from the hospital.

The nurse’s message was terrifying in its simplicity: “We think you need to come on up here.”

“Naturally, we think something pretty major has happened,” Dana Seaton recalled. “Our hearts kind of dropped, but we looked at each other and said we’d get through it. The most important thing is that she was still alive.”

When the Seatons saw their daughter and got a report on her injuries, including the fact one of the broken ribs had come perilously close to puncturing her aorta, the severity of her condition began to sink in. If the aorta had been hit, Seaton most likely would have bled to death before reaching the hospital.

“My initial thought — and I didn’t tell her this — was that I just hoped she would be able to walk,” Dana Seaton said.

Kristin Seaton was already trying to convince those around her — and possibly herself — that she would play volleyball again.

“I knew it would be a long, long recovery... but I knew I would come back and play,” she said.

After a week in intensive care and another week in a standard care room, others still had their doubts.

“Certainly we gave her a lot of encouragement, but we had to be realistic and we didn’t know if she’d ever play volleyball again,” Poole said. “We knew it was the kind of injury that could wipe her out.”

That scenario lingered as Seaton spent a month in a wheelchair, then missed the first week of the fall semester because she was learning how to walk again.

“It really felt like my first time walking,” Seaton said. “I had to learn basics and use a walker. It was horrible. I was 19 years old and having to learn to walk.” At times, progress wasn’t even measured in steps. Arkansas associate women’s athletic director and head trainer Julie Cain said simply being able to sit through a class was an achievement for Seaton. As late as October, Seaton was relegated to doing no more than leg raises, simply lifting the lower half of her leg without any weight or resistance attached. “I can’t stress enough how really, really, very basic those first exercises were,” Cain said. “Every day, for a while, was a new day.”

A SECOND CHANCE Finally, in January, Seaton’s recovery began to accelerate. By March, she was back in the weight room, doing conditioning work and going through select volleyball drills. It was during that time Cain joined Seaton in believing she could make it back onto a volleyball court.

“I still wasn’t sold on her vying for a starting position or anything like that,” Cain said with a smile.

Fast-forward to April, and Seaton was back on the court playing closely monitored minutes. She also was under strict orders from Cain to stay on her feet, not to hit the floor in an attempt to dig balls.

At the end of Arkansas’ spring exhibition season, the Lady Razorbacks went through an annual series of tests to measure gains in areas like the vertical leap. Seaton promptly touched 10-0 as coaches and teammates looked on in disbelief.

“That day let me know we had a chance with her,” Poole said.

Seaton has continued to progress, slowly regaining the power, strength and endurance she once displayed so effortlessly. Poole estimated Seaton is playing at perhaps 80 percent of her former level, but he is hopeful she’ll be full strength by the start of SEC play in mid-September.

“She’s producing at a Division I level, she’s just not as physical as she was two years ago,” Poole said. “She can make a great hit, but it may be five plays before you see another great hit.”

Seaton acknowledges her comeback isn’t complete, but she is determined to make the most of her remaining career. It seems the brush with death has been a source of strength and self-assessment.

“It just kind of makes you feel good to know you overcame something so big. I definitely feel like I’ve been given a second chance,” Seaton said. “I don’t know what for yet, but I definitely think God gave me a second chance and that I’m here for a reason.”

Source: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Sports/200281/