Wood's Pullen shines again after battling blood clot

WINCHESTER — It takes a special type of person to play the libero position in volleyball.

Balls are routinely sent in their direction in the back row at varying speeds, and some of those balls have more spin than others. Whether it’s a ball hit directly at them or one they have to dive several feet to reach, they’ve got to do whatever it takes to send the ball up and give their team a chance to set their offense.

Basically, it takes someone like James Wood 5-foot-4 senior Yeakley Pullen.

“She always has a go-getter attitude,” James Wood senior outside hitter Jessica Putnam said. “She’s upbeat and is positive. She helps other people out every day.

“[As a libero], she goes for everything. And she doesn’t let anything stop her from doing what she does.”

When it comes to Pullen, the words “doesn’t let anything stop her” couldn’t be more fitting.

After leading the area in digs last year while spending more than five weeks playing in pain that medical officials couldn’t figure out, Pullen is on pace to repeat the feat this year even though she went eight months without being able to play volleyball.

The pain Pullen felt in her right arm during last year’s volleyball season was due to a potentially life-threatening blood clot, which ended her season early and required surgery on Oct 31. Also, a varsity soccer player since she was a freshman, the defender was also forced to miss her junior season in that sport.

After taking blood thinners for more than eight months, she was cleared to suit up for James Wood on July 5. Naturally, she’s happy for her overall health, and happy to be back for the Colonels, who are 13-4 overall and tied for first in the Class 4 Northwestern District at 7-1.

“There was a lot of moments in the whole process, from start to finish, where I was really wondering why this has to happen. What is the end result going to be of all this?” said Pullen during an interview before a practice inside James Wood’s Shirley Gymnasium two weeks ago. “But having everyone reassure me that everything was going to be OK, putting all my faith in God, just constantly having people to support me, that really got me through it.

“I don’t have an interest in playing sports in college. Knowing this is my last year, I’m just going all in for it.”

Pullen started playing volleyball in seventh grade. Back then she was an outside hitter, but Pullen said she’s “clearly not tall enough” for the position, so she made the switch to libero when she arrived at James Wood as a freshman in 2015. She’s glad she did.

“I love the anticipation of a ball coming at me,” Pullen said. “I love knowing that I’ve got to get this ball up, and it’s all on me to where I make sure the setter gets a good set and the hitter gets a good hit. Knowing that I’ve got to get this pass up, it’s exhilarating.”

Pullen played on the JV team as a freshman, then moved up to varsity as a sophomore. The 2016 Colonels advanced to the Class 4 state semifinals. Pullen said there were a lot of people who provided a strong example for her, particularly Leilani Burch, a senior who made the move from outside hitter to libero in late October.

“The way that she was willing to sacrifice getting kills in a game and willing to play defense, that made me want to be that much better and be like her that way,” Pullen said.

Pullen took over Burch’s starting job at libero her junior year, and she did not disappoint. Pullen’s 306 digs were 16 more than any area player.

Hillyard said he thinks the skills that Pullen developed in soccer helped with her success. Hillyard’s daughters, Ashley and Megan were both No. 1 singles players for James Wood’s tennis team, and each played volleyball in college. Megan is a sophomore setter at Shenandoah University.

“She’s a great soccer player,” Hillyard said. “I think that’s something that we miss nowadays. A lot of athletes focus on one sport, but they can learn from other sports, too. I think being able to play soccer helps her move better on the floor. She has good footwork and is able to get to balls others can’t.”

Pullen’s play helped her earn second-team All-Class 4 Northwestern District honors at the season’s conclusion.

“I was a lot more confident with my playing my junior year and I had a lot of people that were there to back me up,” Pullen said. “My teammates, my coaches, my whole family was just very supportive. I definitely wouldn’t have done that well if it wasn’t for them.”

Before the season was over, she would need the support of those closest to her more than she ever had.

In a tournament at Virginia Beach on Sept. 16, Pullen began feeling pain in her right arm. She and her family thought it was probably related to a collision that she had at the tournament. They decided to have her checked out during her previously scheduled appointment on Sept. 20 for a foot injury suffered during the spring while playing soccer.

Yeakley’s father, Adrian, said the orthopedist didn’t find anything structurally wrong. But two weeks later, Yeakley’s right arm began to swell. The matter was discussed with James Wood athletic trainer Jess Kotelnicki, and she discussed it with an orthopedist who was present for the school’s football game on Oct. 6.

That discussion made them think that Yeakley might have compartment syndrome, which causes pressure in the muscle areas and impedes blood flow. The thinking was if she didn’t engage in any athletic activity, the symptoms would go away by Monday, Oct. 9.

On Oct. 9, compartment syndrome was ruled out, because Yeakley’s swelling only got worse. An appointment was made with Yeakley’s orthopedist on Tuesday, Oct. 10. Adrian said the orthopedist ordered an MRI because her right bicep area was three inches larger than her left and wanted to see if there was a mass in the bicep that was responsible for the size differential. The MRI was scheduled for Oct. 22, and the Pullens met with their orthopedist to review the results on Oct. 25.

Pullen’s pain got progressively worse during after the Virginia Beach tournament and became constant in October.

But from the Virginia Beach tournament through the match against Millbrook on Oct. 24, her severe discomfort never caused her to miss a practice or match, even though volleyball increased the sensation she was feeling. Yeakley was told from the beginning that her ability to play came down to how much pain she could tolerate.

“It was easily the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life,” Pullen said. “When my arm got swollen, I would have a bunch of tingling feelings, and it eventually escalated into a really sharp pain in my arm.

“It was a constant pain, but I didn’t want to stop playing. I taught myself to block out the pain and avoid it, but it was still there no matter what I did. I tried my hardest to push through every game because I wanted to be out there to help my team so badly. “

Just like Hillyard, the first word that comes to mind when Adrian was asked to describe Yeakley was “competitive.”

“It was very tough for her mother [Crystal] and I because we wondering what was causing the pain,” Adrian said. “We wanted to fix it, but we just couldn’t. But she had no give-up in her. She wouldn’t stop.”

On Wednesday, Oct. 25, Yeakley received the stunning news that finally forced her to stop.

When the Pullen family met their orthopedist that day, they were told that the results of the MRI were negative. But Adrian felt there was clearly something wrong.

“At that point, from the crease in her elbow up into her chest, it looked like someone had drawn on her arm with a Sharpie marker,” Adrian said. “The veins were purple and popped up.”

The orthopedist agreed and said there had to be something wrong, and he immediately ordered an ultrasound. Within 20 minutes, a blood clot was discovered.

“I went in thinking she was going to have a bicep tear or a muscle tear,” Adrian said. “It was very life-changing at that point.”

Yeakley was transported to Winchester Medical Center, but because she needed more specialized treatment she was taken to the University of Virginia Medical Center. After arriving at 11:30 p.m., Yeakley was given blood thinners.

At 5:30 a.m. on Oct. 26, the Pullens met with a vascular surgeon to treat the blood clot caused by Venous Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, which involves subclavian vein compression. (Former Millbrook girls’ basketball Erika Reed had the same condition last year, though her symptoms and resulting surgery took place during the Pioneers’ offseason. It’s a rare condition, but her father, Kevin Reed, said in March it happens in young athletes because of the repetitive motions their sports require.)

“She had two pinched areas in a vein — one was at the rib, the other was at the muscles,” Adrian said. “The vein had just collapsed, and that caused the clot.”

After multiple procedures over the next two days, surgery — which would involve removing her top rib as part of the treatment for the clot — was scheduled for Oct. 31. Without the surgery, there was a good chance the clot could break off and go into the heart and lungs, which would be life-threatening.

Yeakley said the time in the hospital before the surgery “was definitely scary.” But her spirits were lifted by her own positive thinking and the love shown to her. For example, Hillyard said the volleyball team spoke to her on FaceTime as much as they could, and gave her video of the team’s matches to watch.

Adrian said the goal of the surgery — which also involved retracting two muscles — was to open up the area in the upper chest to give her veins room to work. Adrian said doctors weren’t able to remove the entire clot, which was almost 12 inches long, and as a result the vein is closed off. But Adrian said Yeakley’s body had already produced collateral veins for blood flow by the time she arrived at the hospital, so opening up the vein completely was not essential.

“You basically put all your faith in God, and the doctor,” Adrian said. “You just have to have faith that everything’s going to work out. To this point, it has.”

Yeakley’s situation was far from settled after her surgery.

The blood thinners Yeakley was given required her to inject herself twice a day in the stomach with a needle, 12 hours apart.

“I hate shots completely,” Yeakley said. “It got to the point where it wasn’t that bad for me, but giving injections into yourself in the same spot, your stomach gets knots underneath the skin. So trying to find spots that I hadn’t recently been using in my stomach, that was really hard to do because if I tried to put a needle in there it hurt really bad.”

But things progressively got better. In January this year, Yeakley was cleared for non-contact physical activity. In March, Yeakley joined a drug study that allowed her to take blood thinners orally instead of by injection. In April, she picked up the intensity of her workouts.

“She was working out five times a week sometimes, twice a day, working out at Pro Motion and F.A.S.S.T. and at James Wood,” Adrian said. “She was probably doing more than she should have been at times.”

Kevin Reed said Erika had the same problem holding back. It’s the competitor in them.

Yeakley’s surgery might have eased her physical pain, but not being with her teammates hit her hard.

Yeakley missed the last three matches of the volleyball season, including a five-set loss to Millbrook in the district tournament semifinals in which the Colonels had five match points at 14-9 in the fifth set. And she wasn’t able to participate at all in the soccer season, which saw James Wood win 10 games for the first time in the program’s 22-year history.

“There were a lot of low moments, just being mad that I couldn’t be out there with my team,” Yeakley said.

Yeakley was originally supposed to be on blood thinners for 12 months, which would have prevented her from playing volleyball this season. But that strong desire to compete for her school again led to a meeting with her vascular surgeon on July 5 in hopes of going off the blood thinners.

“I definitely didn’t want to push them to let me play just because I wanted it so badly,” Yeakley said. “I wanted to make sure I was healthy enough to go play.”

When an examination revealed that there was no change in the status of the vein — which is what the surgeon wanted to see — she said Pullen could stop taking them. When the hematologist in Yeakley’s drug study agreed with the surgeon’s assessment two weeks later, Yeakley had the clearance she needed to compete. (Yeakley’s condition will be checked again in November.

Based on the way she’s been performing this year, it’s as if Yeakley didn’t miss any time at all. Yeakley said she felt a little rusty when practice first started, but she has 264 digs to once again lead the area. She has 60 more than anyone else.

“She’s been the same Yeakley she’s always been,” Putnam said.

Even more important than having her volleyball skills back is having her personality back.

“It was scary [last year],” said Putnam in recalling the season’s final week. “We knew where she was, and it just wasn’t the same without her. It felt like a big piece of the team was missing.

“She’s always playing dancing around, playing music, and just having a great time before games. It’s great to have her back.”

“It would have affected the team chemistry tremendously this year if we didn’t have her because she’s loved as a player,” Hillyard said. “She’s one of the team captains. I think that’s something that would be missed the most, her being on the floor and taking charge of things.”

Yeakley and her family have appreciated every minute of the entire experience this fall. Adrian says every day is “a joy and blessing.”

“I know I wouldn’t be in the amazing mental state that I’m in now if I didn’t have so many people behind me,” Yeakley said. “It’s just an unbelievable feeling to be back on the court.”