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GYM COACH’S CAREER SUCCESS • 5
TWIRLING TO HEAL Future OU student overcomes serious brain condition
WHAT IS HYDROCEPHALUS? Haylee Chiariello, a soon-to-be OU student, was diagnosed with hydrocephalus after a routine eye exam. We asked neurosurgeon Dr. Naina Gross for some more information about the condition: Hydrocephalus is a Greek word that can be broken into two parts: “hydro” meaning water and “cephalus” meaning head. The condition occurs in an individual when an abnormal amount of cerebrospinal fluid accumulates within the cavities or ventricles of the brain, according to the Hydrocephalus Association. The general adult population makes about half a liter of cerebrospinal fluid a day, which circulates around the brain, spinal cord and back up to the surface of the brain where it gets reabsorbed — unless an individual has hydrocephalus.
NOOR EEMAAN/THE DAILY
Haylee Chiariello, senior homeschool student, is in the running to become OU’s next twirler. Chiariello plans to major in Native American studies next semester.
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our years ago, Haylee Chiariello lay in bed at the The Children’s Hospital at OU Medical Center unable to walk, talk or remember things about her life before surgery. She spent a two-week stay in the hospital constantly praying, thinking about pursuing the passion she was forced to put aside — baton twirling. Chiariello, now 18, can not only walk and talk again, but travels the country competing in baton twirling events and is applying to become the next OU twirler. The Cherokee woman will achieve one of her greatest lifelong dreams in August when she sets foot on the OU campus as a freshman pursuing Native American studies. As a freshman in high school, Chiariello was diagnosed with congenital obstructive hydrocephalus. Hydrocephalus occurs when an abnormal amount of cerebrospinal fluid accumulates within the cavities or ventricles of the brain. Treating hydrocephalus requires brain surgery that lasts about 30 minutes, pediatric neurosurgeon at OU Health Science Center, Dr. Naina Gross, said. Patients usually stay overnight in the hospital and are sent home with over-the-counter pain medication and are told to rest for a few weeks, Gross said. Chiariello is one of the exceptions to a typical recovery. She was in the hospital for two weeks, vomiting from a shift in her brain pressure and unable to walk or get out of bed without the help of a wheelchair. “I suffered memory loss ; I couldn’t really talk, either. I felt like I was being changed. I felt like I lost a big part of my life during the surgery, and it was really hard,” Chiariello said. “I was a twirler at the time, too. I had just started twirling at 13, and it was really hard
CHLOE MOORES • @CHLOEMOORES13 that I had to put that down and put it aside while I was healing.” Two months after surgery, as soon as she could hold a baton in her hand, Chiariello started twirling again. “(Twirling) was really hard, but it did help me with my remediation and healing,” Chiariello said. “It worked my brain and helped me bring back some of my movement and my thinking.” Eventually Chiariello’s twirling took off, and she began to pick up tricks her coach taught her more quickly than pre-surgery. However, she would have lost her ability to twirl completely if not for a routine optometrist visit, when she received her diagnosis.
“(Twirling) was really hard, but it did help me with my remediation and healing.” HAYLEE CHIARIELLO, FUTURE OU STUDENT
At 14 years old, she went to the Oklahoma City Indian Clinic for a checkup, but her appointment turned out differently than expected. When the optometrist looked at Chiariello’s optic nerves, she noticed severe swelling and hemorrhaging in the back of her eye. A few more brain scans revealed Chiariello had excessive fluid in the third ventricle of her brain, which led to the swelling of her optic nerves. Then, she got her diagnosis: congenital obstructive hydrocephalus. She had two weeks to wrap her head around emergency surgery or suffer vision loss, a stroke or worse. “We had to go immediately to a lot of specialists. It’s a very scary thing when you get a serious diagnosis for a child,” Tanya Chiariello,
Haylee’s mom, said. “You start going through tests and they’re like, ‘Tonight at 8 o’clock you need to be here, tomorrow at 7 a.m. you need to be here.’ It goes really fast.” While in the hospital longer than expected, Haylee filled the days by watching movies like “Legally Blonde” with her mom and wanting desperately to “be normal again,” Tanya Chiariello said. The Chiariello family had a circle of support in the hospital from their Native American community in Oklahoma City, fellow members at Crossings Community Church who brought them meals and the “amazing staff” at the Children’s Hospital, Tanya Chiariello said. “God put amazing people in the waiting room with me that were laughing and joking when I would just fall apart,” Tanya Chiariello said. “It was a really bad time. You walk in with a normal kid and then her head is half shaved and all of her beautiful hair is gone.” Once home from the hospital, Haylee had to re-learn how to walk and talk. She underwent educational testing and learned new ways to approach her school work. Before surgery, she struggled with math and other concepts, but she found out the difficulties she faced were caused by the severe pressure on her brain, she said. “She had to figure out how to make numbers line up into columns again because she couldn’t figure out math. It wouldn’t work anymore in her brain, and she couldn’t read for very long periods, but she’s muscled through it all,” Tanya Chiariello said. Haylee also took up an art class in her homeschool co-op and found her drawing skills post-surgery were dramatically better than pre-surgery, as were her piano skills — she takes lessons from a private teacher in Edmond once a week. Haylee called her increase of talent in each skill after surgery “a
gift from God.” “I think God knew that time was really hard on my heart, and he gave me something that made me feel really special and gave me something that I can share with the world,” Haylee said. Haylee spent the last two years of her homeschool career balancing art, twirling and music with her schoolwork. She auditioned and became the featured twirler for the Stampede of Sound marching band at UCO for the 20162017 season and achieved an ACT score that landed her an academic scholarship to OU, where most of her family has also attended. Receiving a scholarship to attend OU is one of her greatest “dreams come true,” but she is most excited to spread awareness for the sport throughout Oklahoma and be a leader in the Native community, Chiariello said. S h e t a u g h t t h e “ Yo u n g American Indian Twirlers” clinic at the Oklahoma City Indian Clinic March 14 that combined two of her passions. She started a GoFundMe page and raised $125 to buy batons for the young girls who attended her clinic. “(Baton twirling is) really awesome for girls because it teaches them to persevere,” Chiariello said. “It’s beautiful, it’s graceful, but it is also athletic.” The opportunities awaiting Haylee at OU exist in large part to her perseverance the last four years. “I can’t wait to see what Haylee does,” Tanya Chiariello said. “She could have ended up on a very different path if she had just given in and thought, ‘This is it,’ and pulled into herself and sat along the wall and read books, but that’s not what she decided to do.” Chloe Moores
mooreschloe0@gmail.com
There are two primary types of hydrocephalus. One is communicating hydrocephalus, which occurs when the brain is producing too much CSF and cannot reabsorb the fluid it is producing. The other is obstructive hydrocephalus, the form Chiariello has, and it occurs when something blocks the passageway of the CSF and prevents proper drainage of the fluid. The disease in general is very common: 50 percent of Gross’ practice is dedicated to treating the condition, she said. The cause of hydrocephalus varies from patient to patient. Congenital, communicative hydrocephalus is the form Gross treats most often, which usually develops in premature infants. Infants can also be diagnosed with congenital obstructive hydrocephalus, but the condition may not present itself until the child reaches teenage years, Gross said. Although Chiariello was born with hydrocephalus, the condition presented itself in a form called aqueductal stenosis. This takes place when the long, narrow passageway between the brain’s third and fourth ventricle, called the aqueduct, stops CSF absorption, forcing fluid to build up in the ventricles of the brain, according to the Hydrocephalus Association. Source: Dr. Naina Gross, pediatric neurosurgeon at OU Health Science Center
CORRECTION
An article in the March 9-12 edition of The Daily headlined “Study invites citizens to find ribbet-ing amphibian data” has been updated online to correct the following: the title of Jessa Watters; what animals are swabbed for the project (only frogs, not frogs and salamanders); how the kits for the project are funded (internally, not from grants); the correct name of the machine used to test samples and how many samples it can test in a three hour period; and who is eligible to participate in the project. It also corrects an error about when the previous samples were collected and who collected them — 2015, not 2016.