Spartan spirit: Amfahr rallies back after brush with death May 26, 2010

Posted by owlnews in Uncategorized.
trackback

By KELLY BEATON, kelly.beaton@wcfcourier.com | Posted: Sunday, May 9, 2010 12:30 pm

GRUNDY CENTER – Erika Amfahr celebrated her 24th birthday on a sun-splashed Thursday in April.

Those who love her took a second to let it all soak in.

No one takes the little moments with Erika for granted anymore. And they haven’t done so since Jan. 13, 2007 – an evening where everything went so terribly wrong.

“I felt almost like I was dead,” Erika recalled of that night.

“She’s beaten all the odds,” Lisa Fiene said of her friend and former teammate.

Amfahr was a 5-foot-10 force of nature at times during her days as a Grundy Center Spartan.

She was a lock-down defender in basketball, and she was a left-handed hitter with enough power in volleyball to garner third-team all-state honors in 2003. That eventually earned her a spot on the volleyball squad at Simpson College in Indianola.

Before long, Amfahr was a thriving college ambassador and a key cog in the Simpson Storm’s attack on the volleyball court.

“We made it to nationals (in 2006) and Erika was a key contributor to that,” explained Fiene, a Waverly native. “She dominated – she hit harder than anyone.”

But all that careened off course on Jan. 13, 2007, during an ominous winter storm.

After a late-afternoon workout in Indianola, Amfahr drove home to spend an evening with her parents. But, as the snow mounted, Cathy Amfahr’s attempts to reach her daughter on the phone went unanswered.

“Finally,” Cathy recalled, “when I was able to get hold of her, it was the hospital in Marshalltown.”

While driving on Iowa Highway 14 that night, barely a dozen miles from Grundy Center, Erika had collided head-on with a van that had swerved out of control.

“Luckily, no one was killed,” noted Al Jones, Erika’s high school basketball coach, “but she was on the table, and her parents told me they had to revive her three times with brain trauma.”

Eventually, Erika was rushed by ambulance to Des Moines. There, she would lay in a coma for more than five weeks.

“Seeing her on the monitor, and with the tubes … (was tough),” noted Erika’s longtime friend, Allison Ringena, who’s currently an emergency room nurse at Grundy County Memorial Hospital.

“It was out of this world,” said Fiene. “Seeing someone in that much pain. … I’ve never felt like that before. It was definitely a lot worse than we anticipated.”

Due to the brain trauma, the left side of Erika’s body had largely been incapacitated.

“She had to re-learn everything,” Cathy explained. “It was basically starting life all over again. She had to re-learn how to swallow.

“It was her memory that was the greatest concern; she questioned whether (her father) Bob and I were her parents. … It was very difficult. But that’s part of the process, the healing of the brain.”

Fortunately for the Amfahrs, Erika’s stubborness survived. And, as a result, so did she.

Erika Amfahr cited one main reason for why she loves sports: “Wanting to overcome the opponent,” she noted. Maybe that statement helps explain her steady progress over the second half of 2007.

She spent roughly 5 1/2 months at On With Life, a brain-injury rehabilitation center in Ankeny. Upon arrival in Ankeny, Erika couldn’t walk. By the time she left, she had improved immensely, though she didn’t remember much of her stay at the facility.

“I was like, ‘What happened?’ I didn’t remember the accident at all,” Erika noted recently. “When I snapped out of it, … everything was a lot slower.”

Much of the next year required rehab sessions at Covenant Medical Center in Waterloo and extensive work with the University of Northern Iowa’s speech and hearing clinic.

To aid Erika’s recovery, her parents walked away from stable jobs. It initially took multiple family members to help Erika navigate the stairs to her old bedroom in Grundy Center. Thus, Bob retired early from John Deere, and Cathy stopped her commute to Waterloo, where she had worked with Hawkeye Community College.

“You just had to be there,” Bob Amfahr said, explaining his thought process as a parent. “When she left Mercy Hospital in Des Moines to go to On With Life in Ankeny, she was just getting off a ventilator. … She had no memory. She was unable to move her arm. And she was still in a wheelchair.”

Bob and Cathy visited their daughter every day in Ankeny. All told, the couple spent nearly seven months away from their home in Grundy Center.

“They were there, every day,” Erika noted. “It was great to have them around. I felt bad, in a sense, that they gave up so much for me.

“It’s because of those people I am where I am.”

Grundy Center and surrounding communities also enveloped Erika with love and support. Friends like Ringena and Katie Hoskins, for example, sold orange bracelets with Erika’s nickname, “Spud,” on them and asked for donations to help with the Amfahrs’ expenses.

“We sold a ton,” said Ringena. “They had to do a couple re-orders.”

Of course, the Simpson Storm gathered for Erika’s cause, too, sponsoring a youth volleyball tournament in which proceeds aided the Amfahr family.

“It was crazy,” said Erika, “to hear about how many people have kept up with me through this journey and recovery.”

Truthfully, the recovery isn’t over. But Erika will take another quantum leap in the right direction on May 22 when she graduates from college – barely 39 months since she was in a coma with her life in peril.

It wasn’t easy, but Erika returned to Simpson with an intense, laser-locked focus two years ago and overcame a sizeable obstacle.

“It’s a phenomenon,” noted Tiffany Everding, one of Erika’s best friends and a former teammate at Simpson. “It’s just her personality to fight through whatever’s in her way.”

“I’m not gonna lie: it was tough,” Erika said. “My first year back (at Simpson) I knew the year below me, so I lived with them. But this year, when I went back and didn’t live with anybody I knew, it was tough.”

Among the thoughts that’ll be racing through Amfahr’s mind on graduation day?

“I think it’ll be like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe I’m doing this. Am I really getting my diploma? Is it really happening?” she offered.

Erika is realistic. She knows the odometer is still rolling on her road to recovery. Her left arm is still ailing, and her thought-process is still a bit slower than she’d like. The business student hopes for a job in retail, yet knows an uncertain future awaits her.

“When you put ‘brain injury’ on your resume, I’m not sure how appealing that is,” she said with a short laugh.

Yet, everything Erika has overcome serves as a strong indication that nothing is impossible. That’s why the Amfahrs and those close to them soaked it all in on April 22.

“I said, ‘Happy birthday, love. Hope you have a good day,’” Ringena said, recalling a text-message sent to her friend. “She’s an inspiration to all of us now.”

“I had been there when she was eating through a tube,” noted Everding. “We’re blessed that we’re able to make more memories since the accident.”

You can be certain the Amfahr family reveled in that April 22 birthday celebration. They gave thanks for a daughter’s toughness, resilience and grit.

“She’s not a quitter,” Cathy Amfahr said.

“That determination – that fighting spirit – I used to teach her, as a mother, that that attitude would get her in trouble. But we thank God for it, because that helped her along.”