Former Howard basketball star reaches beyond courage

Howard County (Map, News) - Bonnie Henrickson touched the hand. So cold. She slowly ran her fingers up the limb. Finally, near the elbow, cold met warmth. She shuddered. The other arm was the same. So were the legs. How could this be?

When Henrickson first saw these limbs, they were impressive vehicles of motion and power. They broke Howard County basketball records and drew attention wherever they went. Henrickson liked the thought of what they could accomplish at Virginia Tech.

Now, they were limp, lying motionless connected to a motionless body on a hospital bed. Life, it seemed, had left them. And for a harrowing 36 hours, life was threatening to leave their owner.

Then, gradually, the vital signs began to return. Still, no movement. A few more weeks passed — and then, a blink of the eyes, a twitch of the body. At last, Rayna DuBose regained consciousness.

The awakening was a rude one. Doctors had already given Henrickson and DuBose’s parents, Willie and Andrea, the horrible news. Soon, they told Rayna about her cold limbs.

“Rayna,” the doctor said softly, “we have to amputate.”

‘Pretty much unstoppable’

The arms and legs were constantly churning. Sweating. Toiling. Whatever it took to secure a loose ball and toss it back up for two.

DuBose was a rebounding machine. In a four-year varsity career at Oakland Mills High School in Columbia, the 6-foot-3 center finished with 1,209 rebounds, which ranks second on Howard County’s all-time list, and 1,591 points (sixth all-time). As a precocious freshman, she led the 1997-98 Scorpions to the Class 1A state title — the program’s only championship — and three years later averaged 18.3 points and 11 rebounds per game. In February 2004, she was inducted into the Howard County Women’s Athletics Hall of Fame.

“She was pretty much unstoppable for us as a senior,” said Marcus Lewis, DuBose’s former coach at Oakland Mills and now the boys coach at Marriotts Ridge in Marriottsville.

DuBose signed with Virginia Tech and showed promise as a freshman in 2001-02 under the demanding gaze of Henrickson, the Hokies’ coach. Coming off the bench in 13 games, she scored in double figures four times and went a perfect 15-for-15 from the free-throw line.

DuBose was “real athletic, very skilled, ran the floor well, [had] great hands, and she could elevate,” said Henrickson, now coaching at Kansas. “She had a real bright future. She had a lot of different offensive weapons.”

On March 23, 2002, Virginia Tech’s season ended with a 77-72 overtime loss to Houston in the Women’s National Invitation Tournament semifinals. Less than two weeks later, DuBose was comatose, hooked up to hospital machines and teetering on the brink of death.

‘Might not make it’

She’ll talk about it now. She’ll talk about it with teenagers and old men, athletes and at-risk youth, doctors and business executives. Anyone, really. This is how she wants to make a living.

She’ll tell them about the fear and the darkness. She’ll describe the pain that sank its fangs into all facets of her being. Then she’ll get to the good part — the triumph over great odds and the parallel life lessons.

But first, the pain.

It was April 1, 2002, and something wasn’t right. DuBose felt lethargic and dehydrated during an offseason training session. Later in study hall, she passed out. At Montgomery Regional Hospital in Blacksburg, she was diagnosed with a bad cold, given some Tylenol and sent back to campus late that evening.

Wrong diagnosis. After blacking out again the next morning, she was taken back to Montgomery Regional and diagnosed with bacterial meningitis, a dangerous inflammation of fluids surrounding the brain and spinal cord. Soon she was airlifted in critical condition to the University of Virginia Medical Center, where she spent the next three months.

The next few days were a nightmare. Not that DuBose knew it. She was in a coma. The meningitis had led to sepsis, a deadly blood infection. As her body struggled to survive, she suffered near-total organ failure, collapsed lungs and a heart attack. Her limbs blackened. Doctors prepared her parents for the worst.

“When we arrived in Charlottesville, they said she might not make it through the night,” Andrea DuBose said.

But after three weeks of unconsciousness, DuBose awoke. The euphoria, though, was brief. She had suffered severe tissue damage and gangrene in her limbs from poor blood circulation. In early May, doctors amputated both of her arms four inches below the elbows and both legs six inches below the knees.

The post-surgery adjustment period was terribly difficult. She was alive, yes, and miraculously so. But tremendous mental and physical challenges awaited her. She cried bitter tears and waved off hospital shrinks.

“She was depressed, very depressed,” Willie DuBose said.

Before long, though, the anguish melted into determination to regain her life. That July, DuBose was transferred to Good Samaritan Hospital in Baltimore for the arduous rehabilitation process, and by September, she had been fitted with all four prosthetic limbs.

Once at home, DuBose refused any special treatment. She insisted on learning how to do everything herself and reclaiming her independence. She said no to a voice-activated computer and a new first-floor bedroom in her parents’ dining room. After getting her prosthetic arms, she taught herself how to climb the stairs to her old bedroom without her new legs.

“I just felt I needed to figure it out myself,” she said, “because people aren’t always going to be there for me.”

‘She just moves on’

“Want to play H-O-R-S-E?”

It’s November 2007, and the members of the Marriotts Ridge boys basketball team are just staring at DuBose, not sure whether she is serious or not. They squirm a little. Their mental wheels are spinning:

If I beat her, so what? I’m supposed to beat a girl with four prosthetic limbs! But if I don’t beat her …

For the last three years, DuBose, who still lives in Blacksburg, has visited Marriotts Ridge when she’s home for Thanksgiving. Lewis, her old coach, relishes her visits. She tells his team old war stories of how hard he pushed her.

“You think you get treated badly?” she asks the boys. “That’s nothing compared to what I went through.”

Nobody dares to disagree. And nobody takes her up on her shooting challenge.

“No, never,” Lewis said. “They know she’ll beat them.”

Despite the artificial apparatus that now comprise much of her limbs, DuBose, 24, doesn’t shy away from anything or throw herself pity parties. With her myoelectric hands, which open and close thanks to sensors that read her natural arms’ muscle movements, she can perform almost any task necessary. She occasionally plays basketball and has developed a passion for volleyball. And she drives a normal SUV.

By the fall of 2003, Dubose had re-enrolled at Virginia Tech and returned to the basketball team. She finished out her scholarship by practicing with the team and sitting on the bench for all games. Last May, she graduated with a degree in consumer studies.

“Rayna doesn’t consider herself disabled,” Andrea DuBose said. “She just says, ‘I have different hands and feet than everyone else.’ But she just moves on.”

Along the way, her remarkable story has been picked up by dozens of local and national media outlets, including HBO’s “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel,” CBS’ “The Early Show” and USA Today. In April 2003, she was presented with the U.S. Basketball Writer’ Association’s Most Courageous Award, and in June 2005, she won the National Association of Academic Advisors for Athletics’ Wilma Rudolph Student-Athlete Achievement Award.

In addition, various fundraisers by Oakland Mills and Virginia Tech have raised roughly $300,000 to offset DuBose’s medical expenses.

“If anything makes me cry, it’s the love and support of everyone praying for me and pulling for me,” she said.

‘I know the reason why’

Nearly six years after her recovery, DuBose continues to inspire.

Currently working as a part-time study hall monitor in Virginia Tech’s athletic department, she recently launched her own Web site, www.raynadubose.net, to promote a fledgling motivational speaking business. This, she feels, is her new mission.

“I don’t regret anything that’s happened to me at all,” she said. “It happened for a reason. If I could go back, I wouldn’t change anything.”

DuBose has spoken at Virginia Tech and some nearby high schools. In January, she traveled to Pittsburgh to speak at a home for troubled youth, to a high school girls basketball team, and at two Catholic schools and Wachovia Securities.

On Feb. 18, she took an all-expenses-paid trip to the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation in Oklahoma City, where she shared her remarkable story and met one of the scientists who was instrumental in the early development of Xigris, a drug that helped save her life. And in May, she will speak at a banquet at Benedictine College in Kansas. She hopes many more events will follow.

“It’s a miracle that I made it through,” she said. “Really, my parents were watching me die. They didn’t think I was going to make it. But here I am six years later, and now when I go out and speak to people, I know the reason why God kept me here. It’s to educate, motivate and inspire people who need it today.”

The man who helped save Rayna’s life

Rayna DuBose has enjoyed plenty of special moments since her recovery from a nearly fatal bout with bacterial meningitis in April 2002 and the partial amputation of four limbs that followed. But few experiences were as personally significant as her trip to Oklahoma City Feb. 18-20. There, at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, she met one of the men responsible for saving her life.

In the midst of two separate speaking engagements at the foundation, DuBose met Charles Esmon, one of two scientists involved in the early development of Xigris. The drug treats sepsis, a deadly blood infection that almost killed DuBose. During her stay, DuBose visited the laboratory where Esmon and another scientist, Fletcher Taylor, worked on the drug in its initial stages.

“Gosh, it was exciting,” DuBose said of meeting Esmon. “People couldn’t pull us away from each other. We just kept talking and talking.”

Esmon came away impressed with “her personality, the very forthright way she met what was a terrible situation and the way she overcame it,” he said. “A lot of people would live life feeling very sorry for themselves, but she doesn’t. She lives life to the fullest with what she’s got, and she’s got quite a lot.”

The rest of DuBose’s stay was filled with a media news conference and a basketball photo shoot at the local YMCA. Her story even made the front page of the Feb. 20 edition of The Oklahoman newspaper.

“They took a ga-jillion photos — literally, a ga-jillion,” DuBose said. “They had me playing basketball at 8 in morning. It was crazy, but fun.”

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