It wasn't a big deal at first. "It will go down," Michelle Hoffmann said of the swelling in her arm as she sat inside the Mater Dei gym waiting for basketball practice to begin. "I need to do my homework. This is silly, this is dumb."
But her teammates' wishes prevailed, especially after the shocked look on their faces that afternoon more than a year ago, when Hoffmann's arm swelled to nearly twice its normal size and she felt numbness in her fingers.
Hoffmann didn't know that she was in the throes of Paget-Schroetter Syndrome, a clotting of the vein running below the clavicle. More commonly, it is called "Backpack Syndrome," because those who carry heavy loads on their shoulders, such as backpacks and equipment bags, are especially susceptible to it. Hoffmann, active in sports her entire life, had been lugging around catchers' gear or schoolwork since she was 10.
"I was amazed they had a name for it," said Hoffmann's softball coach, Ed Ulloa.
More amazing, they found, is that carrying a backpack filled with textbooks could, potentially, be disabling.
Now, nearly a year after the most extraordinary event in Hoffmann's life ended, the 16-year-old sophomore says, "It's important for people to know that this can happen."
A Big Week
Monday, March 1, 1999, was a great day. The week before, Hoffmann had been called up from the junior varsity basketball team to join the varsity for the playoffs. She had also found out that, despite being a freshman, she had made the varsity softball team. "My grades were awesome--I was so happy," Hoffmann recalled. "I was blown away."
Her euphoria was short-lived, however. Like other athletes similarly afflicted, including tennis champion Rod Laver and Colorado Rockies pitcher Mike Cather, as Hoffmann's muscles developed, they pulled her first rib upward. The repetitive nature of carrying a heavy load over her right shoulder pinched the vein between the rib and collarbone.
This formed a clot that restricted Hoffmann's blood flow and caused her arm to swell. In extreme circumstances, the clot could have broken loose and lodged in her lungs or heart.
"It's generally not life-threatening," Hoffmann's physician, Dr. Hugh Gelabert, said. "But it could cause potential lifelong disability in the arm."
The day her arm began swelling, basketball teammates pushed her toward the school trainer, who initially suspected an insect bite was to blame. Basketball Coach Ollie Martin refused to let her play and urged medical treatment.
