WESTMINSTER, Colo. — During his sophomore year at Standley Lake High School, every step for Liam Graham came at a price.
“Stabbing pains," remembers Graham, now a senior. "It felt like when I was running I’d get stabbed in the leg.”
He was a rising star on the track and with the Gators' football team, but no amount of therapy seemed to help the pain in his leg.
“We treated it for shin splints for about a month," Mercedes Steidley, the certified athletic trainer at Standley Lake, said.
“Then he came to me and said he had 'floppy foot' while he was running," Steidley said. "His foot was just smacking the ground.”
Alarm bells began ringing in Steidley's mind, and Graham knew something was very wrong with his body.
“My legs were wobbling while I walked," Graham said. "That’s when I knew yea, this is bad.”
Luckily, Steidley knew those symptoms. They're consistent with Compartment Syndrome, a rare disorder that she dealt with herself in college.
“It was horrible," Steidley said. "I was in the hospital for a month, I had two surgeries a week. I’m still having surgeries. I’m at 16 surgeries on one leg.”
Compartment Syndrome is a painful condition that occurs when pressure within the muscles builds to dangerous levels. This pressure can decrease blood flow, which prevents nourishment and oxygen from reaching nerve and muscle cells.
Thanks to Steidley’s keen observation and the swift action of Graham's mom Amy, who consulted experts at Children’s Hospital Colorado, he was diagnosed and began treatment.
The team, including Orthopedics Institute and Sports Medicine Specialist Dr. Aubrey Armento, assisted him with multiple tests and subsequently referred him to UCHealth Anschutz Medical Campus for further tests that resulted in several surgeries.
"He's a strong kid," Steidley said. "He's a really strong kid. It's been a pleasure working with him. He comes in every day in so much pain but he wants nothing more than to be out on the field pain-free."
Now, Graham does daily physical therapy to combat lingering pain and he's navigating the development of a new, even more rare disorder: Functional Popliteal Artery Entrapment Syndrome.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, Popliteal Artery Entrapment Syndrome (PAES) is a rare condition that causes leg pain in some young athletes. Calf muscles squeeze your popliteal artery that goes through and behind your knee. This limits blood flow to your lower leg when you exercise.
Despite dealing with PAES, Graham's rejoined his friends on the Standley Lake track team. If not for Steidley's intervention, his fate could have been much worse.
“I’m very thankful because if I had broken a bone while I had it I could have potentially lost the leg," Graham said.
March is National Athletic Training Month, and Graham's story is the perfect reminder of the important role a trainer plays in the lives of high school athletes.
“Being with him every day, seeing what symptoms he was having and being able to call the doctor right away and say 'hey I think this is going on,' he might have lost the leg," Steidley said. "He might have been in the exact same boat I was in. I almost lost my leg and that still might be an option for me.”
With Steidley by his side, Graham now looks towards the spring track season where he hopes to use the perseverance learned overcoming these rare disorders to break school records at Standley Lake.
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