Disease ends Swimmer of the Year’s racing career
The great swimmer Gabby McDaniel started swimming at the age of 6 and showed great potential and thus was made a part of the Junior Olympic team when she turned seven. Moreover, when she was four, the champion swimmer Gabby McDaniel could swim the 50 metre
backstroke.
She was then also awarded an athletic scholarship and she swam at a Division I college. It was a diagnosed a month earlier that the 17-year-old Swimmer of the Year could not swim again. The doctors told her connections that the athlete was suffering from
symptoms of extreme fatigue, chest pains, headaches, vertigo for over three years. Moreover, she was also diagnosed with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome along with Secondary Vasovagal Syncope. The reports were provided by Duke Medical Centre’s head
of paediatric cardiology.
When the Swimmer of the Year was asked about how she feels now, she was reported as saying, “It actually kind of seems harder to believe now because before, I was sick all the time. There was never a reason for it. It was something that was out there that
I did not know about.” Gabby went on to say, “It just meant that I don’t feel good, but now that we have the diagnosis, it is hard to believe because there is actually something wrong with me.”
The syndrome, for which the young athlete has been diagnosed for, is determined by an extreme heart rate increase when standing up after sitting. There is also an unevenness of the usual nervous system’s control over blood flow and this imbalance becomes
the cause of malfunctioning homeostasis of the major organs of the body. For instance, the regulation of digestion, temperature, respiration and pupil constriction and dilation, is disrupted.
Gabby’s mother, Cyndi McDaniel who was also the North swim coach said, “It has been really hard.” She added, “She looked at me, crying, when they first told me and said ‘But they thought I could have won State this year if I worked really hard.’ She has
git the kind of personality that she is always made her body do what she wanted it to do. Now somebody’s telling her she cannot do something.”
Gabby managed to surpass six world records in this year’s junior swim season. She was voted as the co-MVP by other members of her team and was the top ranked swimmer at the 2-A state event when she finished fourth in the 100 metre backstroke meet in 1 minute
and 4.90 seconds.
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