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Actually, she can finally breathe, period.
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St. Benedict’s Danielle Frank fights for position with St. Mary’s Jess Weisbrod (42) during a MIAC game Saturday in Winona. Frank, a Caledonia High School graduate, scored 16 points in the Blazers’ 68-66 win over the Cardinals. (Photo by Andrew Link/Winona Daily News) |
Since eighth grade Frank, a 6-foot-4 freshman on the women’s basketball team at the College of St. Benedict, has been bothered by supraventricular tachycardia (SVT).
SVT is a condition in which electrical impulses that control heart rate are abnormal, causing the heart to beat too fast.
“I would get dizzy,” said Frank, who led Caledonia High School to the MSHSL state basketball tournament last season. “I’d maybe feel like I was going to pass out. I would be short of breath.”
For the last couple of weeks Frank has worn a monitor used to record an SVT. On Jan. 3, the monitor recorded an irregular heartbeat and doctors could finally set up a procedure to fix it.
“It has been going on for a long time,” Frank said. “They finally found it. That was a big relief.”
Wednesday, she played at Concordia-Moorhead.
Thursday, she was in La Crosse, Wis., undergoing a surgical procedure called catheter ablation, which is used to destroy the tissue causing the rapid heart rate.
The catheter is like a wire inserted in a vein in the leg and moved into the heart. When it is in position, the wire is heated, destroying the tissue.
A day after the procedure, Frank was back in St. Cloud with her team, and Saturday she was in Winona playing her first game without SVT.
She recorded 12 points and 14 rebounds and helped the Blazers get by Saint Mary’s University 68-66 in a Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference matchup.
“It’s been very scary,” Danielle’s mother, Jean, said after the win. “We were afraid to go and not find the pathway. But they finally caught it.”
There was a small but scary risk with the procedure. Instead of destroying the tissue causing the arrhythmia, the catheter could have destroyed tissue needed for a regular heart beat. Had that happened, Danielle would have had to wear a pacemaker.
Frank played off the condition as not that serious and not life threatening.
“When it would happen in practice, I would have to stop, sit out, and then I could come back in,” she said. “It was really unpredictable. It would happen maybe three or four times a month.”
St. Benedict coach Mike Durbin couldn’t be more thrilled about the good news from the procedure or the progress Frank has made in her first season playing college basketball.
“She started the year our fourth post (player),” Durbin said, “and she quickly moved up. She has been an unbelievable difference maker for us.”
Frank leads the team in blocks (41) and rebounding (9.0 per game). She is also fourth on the team in scoring (7.4 per game).
Ariel Tauer, who scored 17, was the hero Saturday, hitting a six-foot jump shot in the lane with one second left to give the Blazers (10-3, 12-4) the win. It was their ninth win in 10 games.
SMU (2-11, 3-13), which has lost seven of its last eight, got 16 points from Stephanie Ayers and 15 from Jess Weisbrod.
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