Golden Goals
After receiving a heart transplant at Keck Hospital of USC, former NCAA soccer player Courtney Shoda is relearning how to play the game of life.
By Michelle McCarthy
As a lifelong and highly skilled soccer player, Courtney Shoda had performed the maneuver countless times: gain position, stop the ball’s momentum with her chest, let it drop to the ground, then send it flying into the back of net. But during a routine practice with her Sonoma State University team in 2017, a freak accident forever changed her life as she knew it.
“The impact of the ball hitting her chest stopped her heart,” explains Dorene Crist, Shoda’s mother. “It’s called commotio cordis. It’s super rare and usually happens to baseball players.”
Shoda collapsed face down in the grass. When her coach rolled her over, her eyes were glassed over and her face was turning a cyanotic blue.
After receiving lifesaving CPR from her coaches, Shoda was medevacked to a hospital in Humboldt County, where she underwent a battery of tests.
“She was awake the next day and seemed perfectly fine,” Crist recalls.
Shoda graduated in 2018, moved back home to Torrance, Calif., and got back in the groove of a seemingly typical post-grad life: working as an EMT, exercising at the gym and once again playing soccer in a recreational adult league. After the scare, everything looked like it was back to normal.
But in March 2021, tragedy struck again.
“She came home from the gym and went upstairs to shower,” Crist says. “My husband Peter and I were cooking. Her friend called me on the phone and said, ‘There’s something wrong with Courtney, and I need you to calmly go upstairs right now. We ran up, and she was lying on her bed on her back with her feet on the floor. She had fallen backward while FaceTiming with friends.”
Once again, Shoda’s heart had suddenly stopped. Her family called 911. She was unconscious for approximately four to six minutes. Over the days that followed before getting stable, she coded 16 times. (For better or worse, Shoda has no recollection of the incident.)
“I’ll never forget it,” Crist shares. “This woman walked up to me and my husband in the ICU and said, ‘Hi, my name is Sylvia, I’m from heart transplant.’ I just lost my mind. I said, ‘What are you talking about? She doesn’t need a heart transplant.’ This is a person who could jog from our house down to the beach. She was strong.”
Even so, Shoda’s heart had experienced severe and irreparable trauma. At Keck Hospital of USC she was placed on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) — a medical device that takes over lung and heart function for a patient by resupplying the body with oxygenated blood — and kept in a medically-induced coma due to a number of complications. Then began the wait for a donor heart.
Courtney Shoda (photo by Hannah Benet)
Going to extra time
In April 2021, Shoda underwent heart transplant surgery. Once stable and placed in the step-down unit, she was back at square one.
“When I met Courtney, she was in critical condition,” recalls Elyse Peterson, associate professor of clinical occupational therapy who treats patients at Keck Medical Center of USC. “She had suffered multiple intense cardiac arrests and was on ECMO. The first step for our OT team [including USC Chan faculty members Stephanie Tsai and Lucy Hosoda] was to get her to open her eyes. It took a number of skilled therapists and nurses to keep her safe, because she was confused and moving her arms and legs a lot, which is very dangerous for people on ECMO support. It really was a team effort.”
Everyday activities that many take for granted — sitting safely at the edge of a bed or in a chair, brushing your hair, dressing yourself — were challenging for the former all-star athlete.
“She couldn’t even hold her arm out and touch her nose with her finger,” Crist recalls.
To help restore her functional skills, such as sitting upright, regaining awareness of her hands and arms and relearning how to move them with functional control, Peterson, Tsai and Hosoda met with Shoda every day for a month. Some best practices used by the faculty OTs included monitoring her hemodynamic stability during therapy sessions; progressing her mobility and independence with activities of daily living; safely managing medical lines; building strength, endurance and activity tolerance; and monitoring her respiratory, cardiac and neurological status.
Since Shoda had difficulty coordinating her movements, including control of her head, the OTs had to get creative during therapy sessions.
“When we would have her sit on the edge of the bed, her head had a lot of extra movement, which is not safe considering she had a tracheostomy and multiple lines in her neck,” Peterson explains. “So we put a neck brace on her for a little while. We would position our hands and use our bodies as therapists in different ways. We built up the chair using pillows and blankets to allow her to sit in a supportive way.”
For her part, Shoda remained focused and motivated throughout. The same competitive drive she brought to her sports career was put to work in post-surgical rehab, inspiring those who were by her side.
“She has always had a great work ethic, be it playing soccer, at school or at the jobs she had,” says Peter Crist, Shoda’s stepfather. “She has applied that same work ethic to her recovery; She amazes me every day, and I am very proud of her.”
“Courtney always wanted to work hard, even on those challenging days,” Peterson says. “A lot of our work was about establishing a connection and acknowledging, ‘Yes, this is hard. Let’s see what we can do today to still make it a good day.’ When patients are able to realize, ‘Hey, there can be a future after this; I can take care of myself again; there’s a light at the end of the tunnel’ — those are some of the best days.”
A winning attitude
(Photo by Hannah Benet)
After four long months, Shoda was cleared to leave Keck Hospital of USC in July 2021.
More than three years later, she’s still on the road to recovery, building her expressive speech skills and still participating in weekly outpatient physical and occupational therapy.
“Courtney’s continuing to learn, and there are still a lot of things she cannot do. But she learned how to put her mascara on real quick!” her mother says, laughing. “She braided her caregiver’s hair the other day. And I was told she just was able to jump for the first time.”
Shoda echoes her mother’s perspective.
“I’m like a 3-year-old who gets super excited about being able to do things like tying my shoe, zipping up my jacket or putting my hair up in a ponytail,” Shoda says.
And as harrowing as the entire experience was, the family now looks back on their time at Keck Medical Center of USC with gratitude.
“Keck was absolutely amazing,” Dorene Crist says. “We’re still friends with the people who took care of her — they were sweet, kind, patient and personable. They always came in the room with a positive and happy attitude.”
For patients like Shoda, Keck clinicians’ attitudes and expectations can also make a world of difference.
“They didn’t treat me like I was disabled,” Shoda says. “They treated me like every other patient.”
Her recovery continues to progress with time. And while she says she’s still figuring out what her purpose is in life, she’s grateful to be here.
“She wakes up every morning and says, ‘It’s a great day to be alive,’” Dorene Crist says.
While she’s had a long journey, now it’s Shoda’s own attitudes and expectations that are propelling her recovery.
“In life, everyone has two options: you either do it, or you don’t,” Shoda explains. “Growing up, I always lived by, ‘I have to at least try it.’ That’s my mentality, especially playing soccer for so long. It’s really hard and competitive — that definitely made me a lot tougher. I’m not going to give up, because I know that I can do things. And if anyone ever says I can’t do something, I usually do it.”
Peter Crist, Courtney Shoda and Dorene Crist (photo by Hannah Benet)
⋯
Subscribe | RSS