PUEBLO — This was a mother’s nightmare.
On Aug. 4, Cami Collum was swimming with her daughter Brilane Manchego, 15, and son, Bryant, 12, and her longtime boyfriend Jordan Willis at Willis’ grandmother’s house in Fresno, Calif.
Brilane Manchego. (Courtesy of Cami Collum)
Everything was normal on this family vacation. Manchego, a sophomore setter on Pueblo West’s volleyball team, proceeded to have a race in the backyard pool with Willis, and won.
Then things went horribly wrong.
“She went unconscious in the pool and floated into Jordan,” Collum said. “At that moment, Jordan picked her up and I noticed she wasn’t breathing. She was dying, so I gave her CPR and Jordan called 911. I’m a physical therapist and I’m trained in CPR so I just started giving chest compression because we couldn’t get any breaths in her because she had stuff coming up.
"Thank God Jordan was there and called 911 because I couldn’t have done both.”
According to Collum, it only took the ambulance two minutes to get to Willis’ grandmother’s house, but time still wasn’t on her daughter’s side.
“By the time they (the ambulance workers) took over, her heart had stopped,” Collum said. “I thought she was gone. I sat in the front seat of the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and the last words I heard was, ‘She doesn’t have a pulse.”
That’s when Collum turned to a higher being.
“I’m very spiritual and I started talking to God right away,” Collum said. “I told him this is your child, and I don’t want to plan her funeral. I would love more time with her. I asked him over and over, and to give me more time. And he did. He sent her back.
"They brought her back with defibrillators (in the ambulance ride to the hospital). From the emergency room they sent us to Valley Children’s Hospital and she was in ICU for a week. They told me if the ambulance was two minutes later she would have died. It’s a miracle that she’s alive.”
After nine days, Manchego was flown to Stanford (Calif.) Medical Center, which is the only place she could get the surgery she needed.
“The surgery only took about an hour and they put in an ICD, which is a pacemaker and a defibrillator,” Collum said. “Her first line of defense is medication, which she will be on the rest of her life. The second line of defense is her pacemaker and the third line is the defibrillator. It is low risk that she will ever need it (the defibrillator) again.”
The life-changing events of Aug. 4 are something Collum can’t forget and Manchego has virtually had erased from her mind.
“I really don’t remember much from that day,” Manchego said. “I remember little things, like I played a little bit of volleyball that day, and that’s really all. When I woke up, I didn’t feel anything. My mom told me everything that had happened and I couldn’t believe it.
"It wasn’t until the second or third day I was in the hospital that I started getting my memory back, but I still don’t remember much of anything that happened that day.”
• • •
Brilane Manchego this past summer, standing by the pool where minutes later she would go into cardiac arrest. (Courtesy of Cami Collum)
Collum said her daughter showed no signs of heart problems.
“The first sign of the disease they are looking at — Catecholamine-Induced Polymorphic Ventricular Tachycardia (CPVT) – is usually death. You just don’t catch this,” Collum said. “Statistics I’ve seen say 1 in every 250,000 kids has sudden cardiac arrest, and there are many things that cause that. We are waiting on the genetic testing now to find out for sure what she may have.”
Collum and her daughter spent three and a half weeks in California — the last part at Stanford Medical Center before returning home to Pueblo.
Once back in Pueblo, Manchego began seeing a Dr. Martin Runciman based out of Children’s Hospital in Colorado Springs. Volleyball seemed out of the question.
“They don’t want her riding roller-coasters, bungee jumping over cliff diving or anything that would cause a huge rush,” Collum said. “The main thing with this disease — CPVT — they are looking at is adrenaline because adrenaline hits your heart and that’s what they thinking that this disease can’t synthesize adrenaline right.”
Yet on Friday, Sept.25, Manchego received the best news she could: She was cleared to play volleyball with no restrictions.
It’s a sport she has played since she was in kindergarten and loves. Manchego’s mother was a 1996 graduate of Fowler High School and played on three state championship volleyball teams with the Grizzlies. Collum moved to Pueblo 18 months ago.
“That was the best day ever,” Manchego said about Sept. 25.
Veteran Pueblo West volleyball coach Casey King couldn’t want to welcome Manchego back.
“She was our main setter this summer, and it was emotionally devastating to the girls when this happened to her,” King said. “It’s pretty crazy to even think she is back. She’s very, very humble and a real nice kid and the ultimate teammate who leads by her hard work.
"It’s exciting to have a girl who was on the brink of not being around to come back and regain her starting spot.”
Brilane Manchego. (Courtesy of Cami Collum)
Although thrilled about the good news her daughter received, Collum acknowledged it was tough to process for her.
“I’m having issues because I literally watched her die,” Collum said. “I think it will just take time. I just have to remember what I am grateful for and what we have. She’s here and that’s all that matters to me.
"I’m nervous (about her playing). It’s scary to me," Collum added. "I would be pretty happy if she never wanted to play again, but I know her. She is going to have to make that decision on her own. She knows all the risks. I have been honest with her from Day 1. I told her, ‘You died, your heart stopped and it can happen again. You can get shocked.’
"We will just see what transpires, but I think God has her in his hands like he did from Day 1 and I trust him.”
There, amazingly, Manchego was on the court Tuesday when the Cyclones were hosting Centennial in a South-Central League match. Manchego was wearing a plastic disc on her chest, underneath her jersey and just above the inch-wide incision that was made to install her ICD.
Perennial S-CL power West beat the Bulldogs in four games, and it is a match MaLeigha Menegatti, Manchego’s good friend, will not soon forget.
“She brings another energy level to the team,” Menegatti said. “At first we were all so excited to have her back, and we were nervous. But, we just got back adjusted to having her out there, which wasn’t hard.”
And, Manchego cherished her return to a place — the volleyball court — she thought she might never be again.
“It felt amazing,” Manchego said. “I was back and I was part of the team again. I was nervous, but I wasn’t scared. I just felt like I would be OK. All that I have gone through has made me really appreciate life a lot more.”