Aug. 10, 2010

By SKIP MYSLENSKI
NUsports.com Special Contributor

He damaged his left labrum as a freshman and, following that season, had this injury surgically repaired. He missed the following season after tearing up his ACL and then, shortly after a torturous rehab, he broke an ankle during conditioning drills. He would eventually return and flourish last year, which he punctuated with nine catches and a touchdown in the Outback Bowl, but then it was back to the operating table for junior superback Drake Dunsmore, who here recounts his latest (and most-unusual) saga with NUsports.com special contributor Skip Myslenski. . .

ON THE RECORD...With Drake Dunsmore

It starts last summer. I was coming off an ACL, lifting heavy, spending a lot of time in the weight room. I didn't go through spring ball and put on a lot of weight.

Then I started feeling swelling, weakness in my right arm.

It was weird. It didn't feel normal. It carried over from weight lifting into normal, everyday activities.

Sometimes in these cases, you hear people get black-and-blue down their arm. I didn't get to that point. But I might be sitting down watching TV and my arm would start swelling up to where I could actually feel it and see the veins bulging out of my arm like I'd done a-hundred reps of biceps (curls).

It was creepy. I didn't know what was going on. So I decided to go to the doc and get it checked out.

He had me go do an ultrasound. Turns out there was a blood clot in my subclavian vein. So I went to a vascular surgeon and he prescribed Coumadin and Lovenox.

I was taking a pill and injecting myself every night trying to dissolve the blood clot. This was during the summer.

I was on blood thinners for a month, injecting myself every night in my stomach with Lovenox and taking a pill. That was not a very happy experience for me, but it was something I had to do.

I wasn't sure whether I'd be able to play or not. At this point, I'm just trying to get rid of the blood clot.

I couldn't work out. I couldn't get my heart rate going too much because of the clot.

A month went by and the blood clot dissolved and they did some more tests and the doctors thought I'd be perfectly fine to go on and play the season. (They thought) I wouldn't have any risk of developing another blood clot.

They did diagnose me with Thoracic Outlet Syndrome. That means my first rib and my subclavian muscle were pinching my subclavian vein, which caused the blood clot. The doctors, at that point, thought it was just from over-the-head lifts and straining myself there. So they figured, going through the football season, I shouldn't be at any risk. Just don't lift too heavy.

I was kind of hesitant about continuing on and playing football. I had some serious stuff going on.

I made a choice that I wanted to stick with it and see it through to the end.

I got cleared a week before Kenosha. So I had some getting-in-shape to do and I had to get my confidence up in my ACL since I didn't get that in a summer of training.

It took a few games before I was confident with all of that.

Thank God I didn't have any symptoms.

I stopped lifting because I didn't want to have to worry about it.

I kind of tried to put it out of my mind until the end of the season.

It was a blessing to be able to play the season and to start a few games and to get to go down to Tampa and have an awesome time at the Outback Bowl.

At the end of the season, I started lifting again and putting on some size again and I started feeling the same symptoms. My arm started swelling up and I started feeling weak. I went back to the doctors.

They decided at this point I needed some kind of operation.

I didn't have any clots come back, but I was just so worried. I was having the same symptoms. I thought for sure if this keeps happening, I'm going to have blood clots.

The trainers here and one of our team doctors began looking for someone who specialized in Thoracic Outlet Syndrome and tracked down a guy in St. Louis. That's how rare this is. We're in Chicago and we had to go to St. Louis to find a guy.

His name is Robert Thompson at Barnes Jewish Hospital.

I went down there to see him and, after seeing my tests, he agreed one hundred percent that I had Thoracic Outlet Syndrome.

He said right away that I shouldn't have played the football season, that I should have gotten surgery right away since I was at such a high risk of getting a blood clot.

At that point the past is the past and I was just, "Thank God there weren't any complications. I got to enjoy a season with those seniors and my teammates and I didn't have to sit another one out."

It would have been pretty disheartening (to sit out a second season in a row).

He set me up for surgery on April 1.

This doctor saw hockey players, ballet dancers, pitchers. He saw a wide range of athletes. He's been doing it 18 years. He's the man. So I was pretty confident going into the surgery.

What they did, it's a first rib resection. They took my first rib out and they took the scalene muscle out of my neck. Those were the two contributors to that pinching on my subclavian vein.

It was a seven-hour procedure.

They removed the rib. They just kind of clip it out. The same with the muscle. They take that out.

They're working around nerves, arteries, my lungs were exposed. It's a very technical, tedious process to take all that out.

The first few days (afterwards) it's kind of hard to breath because they move your nerve branch aside to get to your first rib and that controls the muscle in your diaphragm. So it's hard to fully inhale. Then other things can pop up. If you over-exert yourself, you get winded. You can bump some nerves and there's swelling up and then you don't have use of your arm.

It's rare (the operation). It's very rare and they don't know exactly what (complications) can happen. I mean, they know what can happen. So you just have to be careful. Like I said, it's a seven-hour surgery and they're just messing around with so much junk.

I spent a few days in the hospital just being monitored and making sure my pain was manageable.

I didn't have nearly the pain I thought I would.

They said it would be like getting run over by a truck and then having the truck back up and run over me again for the next week-and-a-half. It wasn't like that at all.

It was a day-and-a-half of a lot of pain where I couldn't move, where it hurt to eat and turn my head and sleep. After that, it was truly a blessing. It wasn't that painful. I was able to get up and start moving around.

I actually didn't lose that much weight. I lost 10, 15 pounds.

Twelve weeks later, I was able to start running and lifting without any hindrance from my Thoracic Outlet Syndrome.

This is a little different (rehab from a typical injury). It's very serious surgery and serious in the initial two-to-three weeks of post-op, which is when complications can occur. But I was just waiting for soft tissue to heal. I wasn't trying to rehab my knee and get my quad back in shape, or my shoulder and my rotator cuff back in shape. I was just waiting for some soft tissue to heal.

Without a first rib, it's just like an appendix. You're structurally sound, so I don't have to worry about being compromised. And I don't have any symptoms anymore.

It was something I needed to do. In order for me to have the lifestyle I want, an active lifestyle, I had to do this or I was at risk of getting more blood clots.

I'm just so glad I got it fixed. I don't have any of those problems anymore.

I'm fully confident in my knee, my shoulder, even where I had my rib resection. I don't feel any symptoms there, I don't feel any pain. Before I would get sore in my neck, it was hard to get stretched out. I don't have any of that now.

I'm just excited. I'm just excited and motivated and ready to compete.

Personally, on an individual level, I'm just excited to see what I can do.

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