As a star three-sport athlete at Monmouth Academy, most wouldn’t have known Alicia played with an ailment that could have killed her. Had she been diagnosed as a child, Drake likely would never have been allowed to play sports at all.

“Every doctor we took her to said there was nothing wrong with her,” said Jane. “She was never diagnosed with anything other than she had grand mal seizures, which they said were not neurological.

“I always thought there was something more to this, but no one ever believed us. No one ever took it seriously. I always said something is seriously wrong with her.”

While trying to achieve her goal of playing softball at Maine, Alicia’s health declined, but she says coaches and trainers were less than supportive, instead questioning her fortitude. She felt forced to quit.

“It sounds scary, but for some reason, I just knew that if something wasn’t going to change, I was going to die,” said Alicia.

When her health didn’t improve, more exams were scheduled, including one with a cardiologist.

When she went into cardiac arrest during a diagnostic test, the Drakes finally got their answer: something called vasovagal syncope. She had a pacemaker put in four days later.

“Go figure, the 6-year-old was right,” said Alicia.

Playing through

As young as 18 months old, Alicia suffered from seizures. Her parents sought advice from a variety of physicians, but never got a solution. It became so frustrating that Jane, a social worker, feared she’d be accused of Munchausen Syndrome, a disorder in which people complain of an illness that isn’t really there.

“I said to the doctors, ‘She sleeps too much. She sleeps more than my other kids.’ That was not normal,” she recalls. “They’d say, ‘Kids do this.’ That was their explanation.”

They were told Alicia had hyperglycemia and needed to eat well and get rest. Nobody ever suggested they see a cardiologist.

So, the Drakes adjusted to life without knowing a cause or cure. At about the age of 5, Alicia became a budding athlete. Despite fainting episodes, she juggled an athletic life around her health concerns.

“When she played summer ball for the Capital Maineiacs, she’d sometimes play five softball games in a day,” said Jane. “We’d put her in the car when she had an hour between games. We’d put the air conditioning on and drive her around so she could sleep for an hour. Then she could play again. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have the energy level.”

Alicia says it never really stopped her from doing anything. Most people were unaware of her health issues, although some of her coaches and fellow players witnessed some of her episodes and knew her symptoms.

Alicia played soccer, basketball and softball, excelling in all three. During her high school career, she was part of six regional championship teams and three state championships. She also graduated fourth in her class.

The Drakes were told later that Alicia wasn’t in danger when playing. It was when she stopped the activity that could have put her at risk.

“Good thing I played a lot,” Alicia said with a laugh. “Good thing I didn’t sit the bench very often.”

Just get over it

Alicia always dreamed of playing college softball. During her freshman year in the fall of 2002 at Maine, her health worsened. She suffered from nausea, vomiting and dizziness. Her heart raced. Still, she trained and tried to fit in on the softball team.

“It wasn’t, ‘We’ll play a couple of games and work out once in awhile.’ It was hard-core training, and then we’d practice, too. The weight lifting just made me so tired. I couldn’t walk up the stairs to my dorm room. I had classes to go to and school and all the other stuff. It hit me like a brick wall.”

Maine had her complete medical records. Despite struggling, Alicia says she got little support from the team or the coaching staff. She informed her coach she was not feeling well, but was told to work harder, and that teammates were complaining about her effort. She talked with athletic trainers and was told to “get over it.” She was advised to lift weights even if she felt ill.

Alicia finally had to quit the team.

“I just decided to quit because I knew I wouldn’t survive if I kept going,” says Alicia. “It wasn’t easy. I didn’t want to do it, but what else could I do? It was play softball or live. So I decided I had to quit.”

Even after leaving the team, Alicia didn’t improve.

“She was already, as I see it, accelerating in terms of symptoms,” Jane said.

Jan. 10, 2003

Jane demanded that Alicia get a full medical check-up over the 2002 Christmas break. That included seeing a cardiologist.

As Jane and Alicia described the symptoms to Dr. Dervilla McCann, the cardiologist had an idea what the problem was.

“I knew what was wrong with her in the first five minutes,” recalls McCann, of Androscoggin Cardiology Associates in Auburn. “I looked at them, and they’d been struggling with this for years, and it was something that took me five minutes. It was one of those moments.”

Alicia remembers the day vividly. “She said ‘vasovagal syncope,’ and I laughed. It’s not that. We can’t even say that. She said ‘I’m going to do this tilt-table test on you.’ I’m thinking they’re going to tilt me upside down and do all these things to me. I was like ‘Whatever. It’s fine with me.'”

The tilt-table test is designed to evaluate fainting in patients susceptible to vasovagal syncope. The patient is monitored while being tilted gradually.

As they headed for St. Mary’s hospital in Lewiston, Jane and Alicia discussed shopping plans for after the test. Jane brought work to do while waiting.

After being put on the table, Alicia soon got the fainting sensation. “The last thing I really remember was that when she tilted me up, I looked at Dr. McCann and said ‘I’m going to go,’ because I can feel it coming on,” Alicia explained.

“She said, ‘I’m looking at the screen Alicia, you’re fine right now.’ I looked at the nurse and I looked back and I said “I’m going to go.’ She said ‘Oh God, put her down. Then I was out.'”

Alicia went into cardiac arrest. It took over two minutes to revive her.

Cardiac arrest

“She was out,” recalls McCann. “She was seizing. She was flat line on the EKG. Absolutely nothing. That got my blood pressure up.”

Jane had stepped out to grab something to drink when the process began.

“I wasn’t gone five minutes,” Jane said. “I came back up and the crash carts are going back and forth. There’s the loudspeaker yelling code whatever. I’m thinking ‘What’s going on.’ I have no idea it’s her.”

A nurse summoned Jane. When she saw a revived Alicia sitting on the table in tears, Jane assumed she’d had another seizure and tried to console her.

“(Dr. McCann) looked at me and says, ‘Your daughter just went into cardiac arrest. It took me two-and-a-half minutes to revive her,'” Jane recalled. “If she doesn’t have a pacemaker now, she will die. I have no idea why she’s still alive.”

The Drakes finally had the answer they had sought for years: Alicia had a disorder – more common to young women – that can unexpectedly reduce her heart rate and blood pressure so low it can cause fainting, or worse.

But the Drakes were unprepared for the medical measure her doctor prescribed.

Just four days after going into cardiac arrest, 19-year-old Alicia had a pacemaker implanted to help keep her heart beating at a healthy rate and prevent the symptoms she had been experiencing.

“When you’re 19, it’s different than getting a pacemaker when you’re 70,” Tim Drake said. “It did not bother her at all. ‘We have to do it. Let’s go.’ I think she looks at it like committing an error in the field. It’s over, and you forget about it, and you never can if you dwell on it.”

It presented Alicia a new lease on life, something her mother made sure she knew.

“When she had her pacemaker put in, I said to her, ‘God has given you a second chance in life,'” Jane said. “‘A lot of people never get this. You’re going to do whatever you have to do to make use of that. We’re going to use that to the best potential, because we don’t know why you’re still here, and there’s some reason why you’re still here. So we’ll figure that out and we’ll go forward.’

“And I also said, ‘We’re going to sell your story to Oprah.'”

Back to normal

Still reeling after the diagnosis and the pacemaker, Alicia returned to school. Jane assumed Alicia would leave school, but McCann dismissed the notion.

“That was at Dr. McCann’s insistence,” Jane said. “She said, ‘She is going back to school. We’re going to do this in four days.’ The following Monday was a holiday, and she had to be at school that Tuesday. Dr. McCann said ‘You will take her. You will not make her into an invalid. She will not let this be a disability. She will go.’ It was the hardest day of our lives.”

Alicia said she had enough to deal with and had no interest in school. It had been the necessary evil to play sports. Now she didn’t have sports, but did have lingering doubts about her health. Trying to meld that anxiety into college life was not a welcome chore.

“I cried the entire way,” she says.

Two weeks after returning, she went home to take the table test again, to prove that the pacemaker had been successful.

“That was the worst day of my life,” Alicia said. “They had to physically put me on the table and make me sign the paper because I would not do it.”

The nurses had to call in McCann to convince her to go through with it. Though Alicia was old enough to sign the consent forms, her parents assured Alicia they would not stand by and let her die. They were determined to do whatever was needed.

“She was so mad at us,” Jane said. “We took her kicking and screaming all the way there. When I sat down next to her in a chair while we waited, she said ‘Don’t you sit next to me.’ So I got up and moved to the other side of the room.”

This time, the table test went fine.

“She came out of there a new kid, smiling from ear to ear, happy as the day is long because it worked,” Jane said. “She did the tilt-table test and came out 100 percent. She had no side effects. Dr. McCann came out to the waiting room and said to Tim and I, ‘She did absolutely wonderful and now she wants a new car.'”

The other side of life

Alicia says passing that table test was a victory, but it didn’t solve all her issues about dying. It has taken time to feel comfortable with the diagnosis. She still has good days and bad days. She learned to differentiate the heart problems from everyday stress and anxiety.

“A lot of it is mental stress,” Alicia said. “I still feel anxiety. Like, ‘Oh my God, something’s going on here.’ Then I’ll go to the doctor and I’ll find out it is nothing. So every time I go, it gets a little better.”

McCann says Alicia “had the guts to do what I told her to do and she’s had the guts to grow up,” but it hasn’t been easy. The pacemaker only monitors the problem and doesn’t cure it.

“What I’ve done with her really helps, but it doesn’t absolutely fix the underlying physiology,” McCann said. “It just recognizes when she’s about to tip over the edge and moves into rescue. It’s worked with Alicia 99 percent of the time.”

She has been medically cleared to be active in sports, but she says she’s too lazy now, working two jobs in addition to going to school. She admits giving up athletics still bothers her.

“That part has been really difficult for me,” she said. “I still have all my equipment in my bag, and I’ll carry it from apartment to apartment when I move, but I’ve never opened it since I quit.”

Alicia is focused on her nursing career now. After going to the University of New England for a year, she returned to UMaine and expects to graduate next year. She brings the same drive and enthusiasm to nursing that she did to athletics. She also brings a unique perspective.

“I think that affects how I treat people,” Alicia said. “If a patient complains about something, a nurse will be like ‘Okay, I’ll do whatever I can.’ I’m like ‘You need to listen to the patient. They know what’s wrong with their bodies. You have to listen to the person.'”

Alicia had to refocus how she sees herself, and how she wants to be seen. She admits she’s proud of what she’s done despite the adversity. So’s her mom.

“There’s nobody in this world I admire more,” says Jane. “Nobody could be as strong as she’s been. No matter how hard it got, no matter how difficult it got, no matter how many times she cried, she wasn’t giving in. She always bounced back. She always stepped up.

“She fights. She cries. She hates us, but when push comes to shove, she’s ready to go and fights her way back. There were many, many times her father and I would not have made it through this without her to push us and to make us laugh.”