RIVERDALE, N.Y. - Like most collegiate athletes, the preseason offers a chance to shake of the cobwebs, mesh with new teammates and prepare for a potential postseason run. For Manhattan Women's Lacrosse senior attacker Chrissy Gutenberger, this preseason is an opportunity to return to normalcy.
"The first weekend we were outside on the field was a Saturday morning," says the senior, remembering the early parts of February 2011. "I thought I had the best practice of my career and I came off really happy so I called my mom and was talking with her as I walked back to my dorm. As I got closer I started to get a stomach ache and thought I was just really hungry."
As she got in to her room, showered, and changed to go eat, Gutenberger knew something was wrong. The pains in her stomach got worse, to the point where she didn't even want food. Her roommate brought back a bagel for her to have which only intensified the pain.
"I thought, maybe if I have a Gatorade or something it will boost me up," she recalls. "Immediately, I was in the bathroom throwing up."
For the next two days Gutenberger, the active leading scorer for the Jaspers, spent the majority of her time unable to hold down any food or drink, constantly vomiting. As the school week began, she opted not to attend any of her classes that Monday. A friend recommended taking some Pepto-Bismol to quell the stomach issues. Instead, it backfired.
"That was when the pain got worse," she said. "I was going in and out of consciousness because it was so bad. It was then that my roommate decided to drive me to the hospital."
At 1:00 AM, Gutenberger and her roommate sat and waited for four hours in a Bronx-area emergency room trying to figure out what was wrong. Pale from dehydration and lack of food, showing signs of antagonizing pain, the nurses took Gutenberger's blood work while her father rushed down from her native Stony Point, NY.
"Maybe 20 minutes later, a team of doctors were running towards my bed," the then 5'6" junior was still losing consciousness due to the pain. That was when the medical staff told her father, Eric that his daughter was in kidney failure.
Blood tests showed Chrissy's serum creatinine level was at 0.80 mg/dl, the normal female level is about 0.08 mg/dl (milligrams per deciliter), meaning toxins had been running throughout her blood system. She spent eight days in the hospital under surveillance taking fluids from an IV that her body was still rejecting. When she didn't respond to the IV or pain medication, doctors began a heavy dose of steroids to try and jump start her kidney's again. When the steroids didn't work, they placed her on dialysis.
Most dialysis patients go in for treatments, three times a week at maximum. Gutenberger endured seven hours of treatment over three consecutive days, one hour on the first day and then two days of three hour sessions after.
"It was the most excruciating pain I've ever experience in my life," she remembers. "One end goes right in to your heart, through your collarbone, and one goes all the way down to your kidney, and you can't move. That was the most difficult thing I had to go through in the hospital."
During her treatments, medical personnel were preparing themselves, and the Gutenberger family for the worst. Chrissy recalled a moment, near the end of her treatments, when she saw a doctor hand her father a funeral packet in case the dialysis didn't work.
Meanwhile, friends, and family members were signing up to be placed on the organ donor list volunteering to give up their own kidneys to save someone they cared about.
"It was amazing to see everyone want to do that," Gutenberger said. "Everyone jumped at the opportunity. I wasn't too scared but it is a dangerous procedure so I was hoping I wouldn't need the transplant."
Even members of her team, along with former head coach Victoria Latino, came to visit her in the hospital before the season began. For them it was too much to see.
"It was scary to see someone your own age going through something so serious," said fellow senior and teammate Breana Leonard. "You don't realize how crazy it is until you are actually sitting in the hospital room saying to your self, 'Wow it really is this bad'".
"I've never seen anyone that scared," Gutenberger recalled. A few of the girls had to leave because they were so upset seeing me like I was. I felt terrible seeing them like that."
Fortunately, she wouldn't need the transplant. On her third day of dialysis, the doctors took a biopsy of her kidneys not knowing yet that Chrissy's body was coming back to full function. That same morning, she felt well enough for a drink of water.
"I wasn't thirsty or anything, I just wanted to do it," the 2009 MAAC Rookie of the Year noted. "Nothing happened and I thought 'We need to get the nurses, something's working!'."
The doctors ran more tests to confirm what the biopsy would tell them, that the dialysis worked and her kidney function had returned to normal. She spent two extra days in the hospital being weaned off the pain medicine until the doctors felt she was well enough to go home.
Chrissy Gutenberger's battle didn't end there. Like most athletes, Chrissy is a competitor. Once her body felt fine, her mind was ready to get out and play once again. She had already missed the opening day game at Stony Brook and was told she would need to spend two more weeks at home recovering.
"That's frustrating for me because as an athlete, as soon as I feel better, even if it's a strained muscle, I want to go back to doing what I was doing before."
The Jaspers would go 2-1 in their three games without their star attacker but finally got her back on March 10, in a home game against Central Connecticut State University.
"I think we had to realize that we needed to battle that much harder to make up for her not being there, just like she was battling to get back onto the field," said Leonard. "Once she came back, it was great. To see someone fight something so serious in a short amount of time and be able to bounce right back is awesome, but I would get nervous at times hoping that she never had a relapse."
The prolific scorer went right back to her trade, scoring a game-high five goals, in a difficult one goal loss. Her final goal that evening was the 100th of her career, a plateau that has only been reached by six others in program history.
"At that point, I needed to get back on the field," said Gutenberger, one of the team's four captains. "I'm not going to be afraid of what I just went through, but the doctors were scared of me getting hit and going right back in to kidney failure. I was a little tentative in my first game but I needed it to help in my therapy."
Manhattan would finish the season a disappointing 4-10, missing out on the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament. Something that only has the determined senior more focused on her final season which begins Feb. 25 at Stony Brook.
"I played the entire season last year and I probably should have redshirted instead," Gutenberger admits. "I could see it on film that there were ground balls that should have been mine, or goals that should have been mine. But I'm not the kind of person to give up on something."
Since her ordeal, Chrissy has become extremely active in causes to help others who suffer from kidney related diseases working with the American Medical Association, encouraging folks to register as a donor. Today, one single organ donor can save up to eight different lives. Her friends and family even helped put together a video promoting the website www.AMASavesLives.com. Gutenberger has also helped raise money to help pay for patients treatments by collecting the tabs off aluminum drink cans, something she has encouraged friends, family members, other students and athletes at Manhattan College to do as well.
Despite being medically cleared to play and having one of the better 'fall ball' seasons of her career, there are still risks. Doctors still aren't sure what caused the original incident or what has caused Chrissy to relapse three times in her recovery, the most recent coming in August before school began.
"It can be a normal day, then I'll have a salad or something for lunch and I'll go 'Oh no, it's coming again'," she describes. "I can feel all the pain come rushing back. It could be my kidneys or my stomach, and then I have to be rushed back to the hospital. It's still pretty scary."
As she gets ready to begin her final season in Riverdale, she has learned how to control the anxiety that comes from a relapse and even the potential sparks of one. That is something she says is because of what her new head coach, Diane Haddeland, has instilled in the team.
"She definitely got us in to a regiment of you're lifting and you're getting healthy," Gutenberger said of the new off-season routine. "I made it a point to eat well according to what she was implementing. I feel like this semester I've gotten through it a lot better because of her."
This season, Gutenberger enters as the third leading scorer in Manhattan women's lacrosse history with 156 points, including 28 assists. She is also second all-time with 128 goals, sitting 67 goals behind Lori Graham's (1997-01) 195 tallies.
"This season she's back to normal, there is absolutely no difference," Leonard notes. "You would never be able to tell that she went through something this extreme."
"I'm the type of person who has such high expectations for myself and people say I should cut back but I'm not like that," boasts Gutenberger. "I really want to get to that 200-goal plateau, I only need around 70 for it but if we don't get to MAAC's, I'm going to be really upset. I want it bad, it's my senior year and we have the girls to do it."
The preseason began a little over a week ago for the Jaspers women's lacrosse team. A chance to mold in to the final project determined for a conference championship. For senior attacker Chrissy Gutenberger, it's a chance to do what she does best: beat everyone and everything else out there.
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